What the heck is this biatch rambling on about?
Why can't she find a single place where she can satisfy her appetite once and for all and spare the rest of us her agony of finding yet another borhochiak place?
It is people like you who spoil our tourism industry.
To readers of this blog,fans or unfans these are some of the 'fan mail' that I have received since starting this blog.I have done a little soul searching since.
I began unhappy that yet another recommendation fell short of expectations that I felt was totally misrepresented.It made me feel like a fool,and even more foolish to have recommended the place as well to other guinea pigs that tagged along with me.
We live in a food paradise.Is it too much to expect that the food operators conform to what we their customers want,expect and demand?Is it too much of us to cry foul when they compromise on the quality of food?
A food paradise where once upon a time food really used to be excellent because the operators were fuelled by pride not by profit.A place where those food sellers would feel ashamed if they churned up anything less than the best for their customers whom they truly appreciated ,worked hard for and filled them with pride when they saw us off with satisfied smiles.
Today it is a whole new different scenario altogether.Due to the food paradise label,even those who cannot cook have jumped in on the bandwagon from lesser known places,relocated here,started businesses when they actually should not.They hijack the Penang label and make the rest of us regular patrons hopping mad because hey,to us diners not bound by any food guidelines and hocus pocus,they are misrepresenting Penang food on the whole.
We feel that they are tarnishing the image of the state.
We are a state proud people.
We feel helpless that such a sacrilige can be allowed to fester.
Then we have the new phenomenon of bloggers,feted by clueless chefs and media representatives from all over the world,eager to have a slice to take home and brag about or to be an authority on Penang cuisine in their homeland,who should in my opinion not 100 percent rely on them for recommendations.
Why you ask?The bloggers are new to attention from various quarters,it gets to their bloated heads,free invites start to flow their way,they feel all important and think they are doing a great job of promoting the state.
However they are self bound by an unspoken rule not to post offensive* material so that their revenue won't be hurt.They may have no censorship in cyberspace but they sure know where to draw the line and end up not daring to tell it as it is for fear of offending certain parties i.e. the state tourism,the almighty restaurateurs,etc.This is where we the diners end up indirectly paying one way or another.
I only knew this after I started this blog.All those adverts that you see on their blogs are sponsors or contributors that allow them to lead a leisurely existence to continue writing in their favour as little cheques,vouchers,writing offers,judging appearances,interviews,jobs float in.
Look I am fed up with this whole charade.
Fed up with those once used to be great makan places that have so deteriorated.Which Malaysian doesn't know of any famous stall that if once passed down to their children suffers in terms of taste,quality,price and so on so forth?Which Penangite hasn't heard of the operator that sells a certain tidbit and managed to educated all his children overseas only to have them head back and takeover the tiny looking little business from him?
Fed up with being threatened by "you'll scare the tourists away".Come on Penang hawkers are not totally reliant on tourists.Most of us eat out almost daily and we are the core support for them.If they were totally reliant on tourists means something must have caused us locals to pull the plug on our patronage of their shops.Get real!
Fed up with being told to'eat somewhere else'.Why can't I make noise if I don't like it?Why can't I insist on quality?And why can't we insist on value for money?Why must we Penangites be forced to live with it because" it won't be good for tourism if you complain"?Why can't I say the place is borhochiak?Sheesh.
Bear with me as I am still trying to find a balance between which peeves me more, borhochiak places or borhochiak recommendations.At some point I felt as if I were the devil's advocate for daring to broach this untouchable,shove it under the carpet,topic.
If you can't,you can always press the little X button at the top right hand corner of your screen.
Or pretend to be a tourist that is faint hearted so that the detractors can triumphantly justify that I scared you away.
*just in case you didn't already know,this borhochiak blog is an offensive site to easily offended people who want to stubbornly defend publicly offensive food
