Your song (2)…

I hate reality shows!!! Now, let me rephrase that. I love reality shows…a lot but I hate how things often turn out in the end. In the last two seasons of American Idol, I was really pissed off that David Archuleta and Adam Lambert did not win.

Well, I’ve been following this year’s X Factor on youtube…and I was tremendously impressed by this guy at the audition – Danyl Johnson…

Gosh! He was a natural – a really great singer and performer. That was obvious right from the start. That Joe Cocker’s “With a little help from my friend” is no piece of cake but he handled it so well – like mere child’s play.

Then it was downhill all the way until Week 8 when his stunning, simply awesome rendition of Elton John’s “Your song”…

…simply blew me away. This song holds a special meaning for me – it was the first song I sang at an English pub in Plymouth when I was there in 1994…and that started a series of “appearances” in the local karaoke scene that made me a whole lot of friends the 3 months that I was there.

Danyl did Michael Jackson’s “Man in the mirror” in Week 9…

…and his superb interpretation of The Gloved One’s song was indeed a fitting tribute to the late superstar and it left me quite…breathless.

Then the shocking revelation came! He was voted out of the competition! How could that be? The other three who will now proceed to the finals were at best note-perfect…but lacked Danyl’s life and soul in their songs. In other words, I thought they were pretty boring.

SIGH!!! It does not really matter now who wins as to me, he or she, in my eyes, would not be the best and would come nowhere near Danyl Johnson.

In pieces…

There are many Malay stalls all over town selling roti canai but not the others that one may find at Indian or mamak stalls/shops in West Malaysia. Recently, I happened to come across a stall at Bandong here in Sibu selling very nice murtabak with chicken meat filling – made by some guy from Penang, somewhere towards the Penang/Kedah border, he said.  Other than that, we probably would have to go to Balkis Restaurant located in the building beside the old Sibu mosque.

My daughter loves the thosai there…

…served with two kinds of dip – one is a sweet pickled chilli dip or some kind of chutney and the other is something made from yogurt…

Everytime she comes home, we would go there and she would eat to her heart’s content.

The other day, we also tried the chapatti…

…which actually was something that tasted like what my mum used to make – we called it kueh bayi (literal translation: a sikh/singh, taken loosely to mean “Indian”) and ate it with curry…

I guess those of you in the peninsula are very familiar with these but they are not commonly found here probably because of the very small Indian population in Sibu town. Personally, I prefer these to roti canai…but some may not take a liking to the fermented taste in the thosai.

Whatever it is, I, for one, would like to give everything a try and get to know our own local delights. What about you?