Paddy and Tranquility

As a Malaysian, I love all sorts of rice based products, especially Pulut (glutinous rice). If I had the freedom of choice, and suffered no restrictions on my diet plan, I could have rice dumplings for breakfast, Japanese rice crackers for coffee, steamed rice pancakes for lunch, rice cakes for tea and rice balls for dinner. For supper, I can have different varieties of sushi, and kuih, such as angku and layered kuih.

Yet, as much as I love glutinous rice, I was told by my one of my colleagues that eating too much glutinous rice makes one very forgetful. Although I have no inkling whatsover how having excessive glutinous rice erases one's memory, I think there's some truth in it. Anybody who hangs out frequently with me will testify that I have a porous memory, 'non-absorbent' as my cousin would bluntly put it. I have a 3-second memory, just like Dory the Fish in Disney's Finding Nemo. Everybody can tell me anything, but I will forget them 2 seconds later. If it stays more than 3 seconds in my memory cells, then you bet that information must be pretty captivating, and it'll be there for many years to come.

Hence, when I noticed The Rice Museum (Laman Padi) right at the junction before turning into Langkapuri Resort, I was so excited that I asked Aisyah to stop the car and turn around immediately. Aisyah did stop, all of a sudden, in the middle of the road and turned the car 180 degrees. Fortunately, we are on a very secluded island. There'll be cars passing by every 5 or 10 minutes, unlike KL where cars just wheeze past you every second, without giving you a chance to cross the roads.

As soon as we came to a standstill, we hopped out of the car and onto the bridge towards the Rice museum.

On our right, we saw scarecrows and muddy paddy fields.

On our left, we saw healthy living paddy plants.

Up-Close, we saw rice-grains still attached to its stalk!

My greatest pleasure in visiting the Rice Museum was that I got to see my favourite food growing on a plant. So, I happily snapped a picture of it. I was too engrossed in taking its picture that I forgot to pluck of one of the grains and see how it tasted and feel like.

When I returned to the big, bad city, as I was eating a big plate of rice, I began to wonder: 'Cooked rice is wet, sticky and moist; Rice grains that we get from the stores are totally dried, no humidity left in them; How'bout the rice grains growing on the plant? Is it wet? or half dry, or totally dry? How can it be totally dry when it's growing on a living plant?'

I regret that I only thought of this statement as I began to walk out from the twin towers medical centre. I should have touched the little grains of rice growing on the paddy plant as I knelt onto the ground near them. My level of curiousity was just not strong enough, I guess.

A pretty Middle-East lady trying her hands at separating the rice husks from its grains

Making my favourite kuih from scratch : 1st step - Pounding rice grains to make rice flour

Planting paddy is not an easy job. First, buffaloes are employed to plough the field for soil cultivation. Then, the farmers will throw all the seeds onto the ground, water the earth and fresh green plants will sprout from the land. Once the height of the plants are about half an inch, the farmers will bend their backs under the hot sun and rearrange the plants in neat little rows and columns. From far, it looks so symetrical that it'll impress any origami artist, mathematician and neat freak.

Paddy Plants - all arranged in neat rows and columns

When the paddy plants have grown to their maximum height, and starts flowering, the farmers wives will setup a delicate network of string webs to a series of traditional banging tool to chase away d birds. The banging tool consists of a metal bucket and a rectangular piece of zinc roof. As soon as bugs, locusts and swallows come swooping down onto the paddy plants, the farmers' wives will be busy maneuvering the intricate web tactfully from all angles, frightening away the buzzing insects and chirping birds.

The carefully woven web of intricate designs

See! They even have to set up straw hats, 'straw-people' to chase away the crows.

Yes. Indeed, it is never easy to grow rice, no matter where it comes from. From now on, I will not waste another grain of rice on my plate, lotus and banana leaves.

A Vast, Green Paddy Field , right behind Mahsuri's Tomb