Newspaper Man

This post is part of the A to Z Challenge. Each post will be associated with a letter of the alphabet with the theme ‘Malaysiana‘

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After introducing the Gas Men and Ice Cream Man to all of you, next up is the Newspaper Man! And before you think that he’s the guy that works at a newspaper company, I’m sorry to have to burst your precious bubble but this is the Newspaper Man I’m referring to:

If you live in a house and not in an apartment building or condominium, it’s highly likely that you get your newspaper delivered by someone who drives around the neighbourhood with stacks of newspapers on his motorcycle – the Newspaper Man.

Normally, in a neighbourhood, there’ll be one dedicated Newspaper Man however, it’s not unheard of these days to have more than one fellow providing this service in a neighbourhood.

I remember moving in to my house years ago and wondering how we could get the newspaper delivered when we saw our new neighbour’s Newspaper Man delivering their monthly bill. So, we hailed him down and told him we needed a Newspaper Man. He gave us a list of newspapers he could deliver and we told him which one we wanted. Delivery started the very next day!

He’d come by each morning at about 6 am, remove the paper from his stack of papers, roll them up, secure it with a rubber band, and fling them over our gate onto the porch! He has nearly perfect aim!

My Newspaper Man works almost year-round except for a few days off for Chinese New Year and when he takes a vacation or if there’s an emergency. If it’s a planned vacation, he’d insert a note with one of the papers explaining how long he’ll be away. That’s when we’d have to schlep to the nearest convenience store to buy the paper ourselves.

The Newspaper Man, I hope he never goes away.

Mangosteen

This post is part of the A to Z Challenge. Each post will be associated with a letter of the alphabet with the theme ‘Malaysiana‘

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Now that we all know that the durian is the King of fruits, did you know that the mangosteen, or manggis (in the Malaysian language), is its queen?

The reason for this (as I’ve been told) is that whenever you eat durian, whenever possible, eat mangosteen after that.

According to the philosophy of Traditional Chinese Medicine , durians are considered “heaty” or “hot” food. While the mangosteen is “cooling” or “cold” food. So, eating them together will balance your body.

One interesting thing I learnt about manggis was that you can find out how many white fleshy segments are inside the fruit before you cut it open. At the bottom of the fruit, there are raised brown ridges that radiate out like a star.

In the picture above, there are 6 ridges/ arms of the star. Therefore, there’ll definitely be 6 white fleshy segments when you open the fruit! Don’t believe me, get your hands on a mangosteen and give it a try!

Ever seen/ ate a mangosteen? If yes, what do you think?