Belacan Club News

6 October 2007
Dear Friends,

It has been a while, maybe for a long time since I updated the last News. Life has been busy, no time no time is always the best excuse!

Belacan Club is still active, or I should say is too active among ourselves. Especially, in the beginning of the year, we have been meeting up at different members' homes for occasions like New Year celebration, birthdays etc. Since the gatherings happened mostly on Saturdays, basically we are seeing one another every other week or at least once a month; besides the small "nur Frauen" meetings which happened during the weekdays.

Since May this year I have been working fulltime, plus my weekends shift and our own commitments during some weekends, I have not been able to organise any bigger Belacan Club get-together. Our next gathering will be on this coming Saturday, 13th of October in Dortmund, hope to see you there.

When Belacan Club was first appeared on the web, 3 names were listed and for a long time we had only these 3 names. Shortly before our summer gathering in 2003, some new Malaysians living in Ruhrgebiet joined in. For the first time then we had a table full of Malaysians from Ruhrgebiet, it was for me a great achievement for Belacan Club. As our goal is to be able to form a small community in where we live, a chance for us to speak our mother tongue once in a while and talk about our foods (very important). : As time goes by we brought in friends we met during language course to join our community. Now we have Korean, Japanese, Southeast Asians and even a Latin American in our circle of good friends.

This group of people have managed from did not know one another in the beginning to coming for a gathering full of strangers, exchanged phone numbers after the gatherings to meeting after school or work for coffee, and some months later became good friends. Having friends away from home has made living in Germany a lot easier and pleasant. We were lucky that we have been able to get along well, really well! Otherwise, meeting so often would be unbearable! Thanks to our hubbies too, if they can't stand each other, it would be impossible for the wives to meet up as couples or family.

Recently we have lost a friend who meant a great deal to us. Nydia came into our group as we began to form the small Ruhrgebiet-community 4 years ago! About 6 of us have been great friends since then. Two years ago Nydia was diagnosed with lung cancer. It was a shock to all of us. She was not a smoker and grew up in a clean environment, it puzzled the doctor as well us how she could get this sickness. Neither Nydia nor we have a clue why her! Shortly after that Nydia has stopped asking the question 'why' and just went ahead to fight against this serious sickness. Indeed a very tough girl, she had gone through the whole package of chemo therapy. She became well, the tumour shrank. We all knew if Nydia got well, 90% was her will to live and fight for her life. The following year in August 2006 Nydia and Lorenz got married and we were there to witness that beautiful moment. Months later her condition got bad again after she got her medication changed, she had to again start another therapy. Everyday as long as we were still having her has been a gift for us. Recent months we have noticed Nydia's body became weaker and weaker, praying for her hoping she would pull through as we knew she planed to fly home in August to have her customary wedding in Malaysia. She managed, as we all know if Nydia wanted it she would be able to get it done! Nydia flew back to Germany after her Chinese wedding ceremony. On the 18th Sept 2007, Nydia left us to rest in peace, suffer no more pain. These two years Nydia had lived her life normally despite her sickness. There were days when the medication pulled her down, she would rest at home. Never a day we saw her complaining about or mourning about her fate. She had taught us to be positive in our lives and live our lives to the fullest! We will miss her a lot a lot and she will always be living in our loving memory!

ShawFen

6 October 2007

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Dear Family and Friends,
Another year is coming to an end, I realise that we have not been able to keep in touch with you as often as we would like to. Here we would like to keep you updated with what's going on in our life this year. Daily routine, another busy year…. :! I'm back to work again since March this year, employed by a Swiss company called Swissport Ground Handling. Those of you who are still in airlines business should have heard of it. Swissport used to be a sister company of Swissair. Swissport's functions are quite the same as SATS; airlines are our customers and our company handles check-in, departures, arrivals and baggage services for different airlines. So, what do I do? I'm assigned to the security team and we are in charge of certain security matters for Delta Air Lines. American carriers have a different security procedures compared to other airlines. Yes,,,I am back to sort of shift hours. The good or bad point is I work only in the early morning. My duty starts at 6am and ends at about 10.30am. I am free the whole day after work, but I have to go to bed early because I must wake up at 4am. Besides that, I do have to work on weekends and public holidays. What does Joe think??? Well, after years of me on holiday and we always drove away spontaneously without early planning, he is not very amuse with - now our life needs a bit of planning ahead! : Never mind, Joe is not too old to learn, although he is from another generation ,,ha, I believe he will learn to get used to the situation! We have not been back home (Malaysia) together for holiday this year. Ever since we got married, Malaysia seems to be our only holiday destination for some years. Now we are trying to fly back home once in two years, so that we could go somewhere else for holiday. This year we have been to Zakynthos for a 7-day-trip in August. Zakynthos is a small Greek island on the west, which is not far away from the mainland and could be reached by ferry from Athens. We had a wonder, relaxing and doing-nothing holiday. All we did was lazing on the beach, had good food and good wine! In the beginning of October I flew back to Malaysia alone for 2 weeks to renew my passport. Well, I could have get it done here in Berlin or fly over to London. It was quite a last minute decision as I found out at work that I could travel as staff on Swiss Airlines to Singapore. So, I went back to Malaysia via Singapore, got my passport renewed, spent some quality time with my family and had loads of good food of course. I would like to apologise to all of you for not being able to contact or visit you while I was in KL. I had some problems with the passport application. It took more then a week before I finally got it. I have been running up and down trying to get immigration to speed up the process. Phew, I received my passport a day before my departure back to Germany! When will be our next trip back to Malaysia? We are planning to come home for durian season. If everything goes well as planed, we would like to fly back some time in June. The next trip we will be taking two friends (a couple) with us. We hope to be able to take 3 weeks holiday and spend at least 1 week in Singapore. So, hope to see you soon! Here we would like to wish all of you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Love, ShawFen & Joe


4th Sep 2006
Dear Friends, It has been a while since we last get together. Our last gathering took place at Rosengarten China Restaurant in Düsseldorf. That was on the 29th April early this spring. Joan Lim found us through the website and we've managed to bring two groups of Southeast Asians together at that gathering. The Ruhrgebiet gang and the Düsseldorf gang met, we had good food and made new friends of course. After our meeting we actually would like to meet up some time in summer to have a BBQ outing. Unfortunately, I was busy since March this year with my new job. Also since then I have been working often during weekends. Whenever I had my weekends free, there was always something to do, someone to visit, someone from Malaysia came to visit or a wedding to attend. Summer is the best time to get away for many of us. So as a result, many people were not available to meet in August especially those with schooling children. Anyway, we are in September now and we are going to meet soon! There will be a gathering coming soon on the 23rd September, hope those of you who are interested would come and join us. For information please click the EVENT site. Looking forward to seeing and catching up with all of you soon! ShawFen 4 Sep 2006

20th February 2006

Dear Friends,

Another year has gone by; we are in the year 2006. I could still remember when we first put up the information for Belacan Club in 2003, there were only three members in the Name List for more than half a year. Two out of the three members are my friends, it is great to see now we have grown and continue to have new members.

After many gatherings in these three years, inclusive of some (or often) spontaneous meetings at our homes, we are getting more personal with one another and getting to know one another better. It is also a nice fact that the husbands are also enjoying or in another word could stand one another well. What comes under EVENT, will be a gathering that would happen once in two to three months.

Among us, there are fulltime mothers, part-time staffs, fulltime employed, job seekers and students from different nationalities. For those of us who are living in Ruhrgebiets, we do meet up very often. We have taken this opportunity to learn cooking local specialities from one another, of course this will lead to a yummy lunch or dinner after that!

On the 28th January 2006 a perfect Saturday for us to meet up to celebrate the Lunar New Year eve. We have chosen Dschunke Chinese Restaurant in Düsseldorf for a reunion lunch. Besides the normal bunch of us from Ruhrgebiets came for the gathering, we had again the Pironti Family and also meeting our new members the Jakobs Family for the first time. Both families are from Darmstadt. You may like to have a look at the photos!

As to Farewell 2005, we had a gathering planned on the 10th Dec 2005 in Del Sol Café Bochum. Probably due to the cold and wet winter not many people from far responded. We had finally cancelled, and reinstated back the meeting for dinner because of the overwhelming response from the Ruhrgebiets bunch. : Joan (from the Philippines), our new member came for the first time with her hubby, Norbert, and it is nice that they enjoyed hanging out with us and will come and join us in the future. For this gathering, I did not manage to take any photo.
20th February 2006

 

Dear Friends,

Our last gathering was on the 6th August 2005, it was also our very first outdoor get-together. I normally tried to fix a date 3 weeks prior to the Rendezvous, so our friends living faraway would have enough time to plan for the trip if they would consider joining us. Since we are having such a great summer, many of us were real excited about having an outdoor BBQ.
After living in Gelsenkirchen for 5 years, though we are experiencing many great warm and sunny summer days this year, I still don't think we should take a risk making BBQ in a park without shelter. It is not so easy to find a suitable place for us due to summer school holidays. Many good places are fully booked. However thanks to a friend who recommended Freizeitpark Schloss Beck in Bottrop (www.schloss-beck.de). It is a children amusement park, where entrée fee is inclusive of games and park facilities. With a few Euros, we could rent a BBQ pit with tent.
The week on Wednesday before our Saturday BBQ comes the weather forecast - BAD WEATHER with rains and strong wind! (Sigh) What shall we do? Should we just cancel the event and stay at home!? After much consideration, knowing everyone (including myself) is looking forward for once something different than restaurant food and confined to indoor. OK, we will meet…no matter what!
On Saturday morning Joe and I arrive here at about 9.30am, pick up the grill and find a pit with nice view next to the lake at the end of the park. We started the fire while waiting for others, meanwhile enjoy our branch. At about 11am, people start coming in and at about 1pm all 12 of us are here. We have a nice time grilling, chatting and eating as usual. Since we are doing BBQ potluck, we get to taste our friends' special marinade meats and fishes, for example Jin Jin's sate and Sunny's Korean BBQ pork. At about 3pm, it starts drizzling but we are well covered under the tent. After 4pm the rain gets heavier and heavier, when we realize that the tent could hardly stand the strong wind anymore we quickly pack our things and load ourselves into the cars. We are suppose to return the grill by 5pm, from this point of view, the rain comes just in time....perfect!
It is so difficult to predict the mood of the weather, just one weekend before and one weekend after our BBQ Saturday we have such a nice weather, dried and sunny. Anyway, I am really glad that we have managed and did enjoy ourselves despite the lousy weather which came only later that afternoon.
If you are interested to join us, do look out for the next event or drop me a mail. We should be meeting up again end of November in Ruhrgebiet.

ShawFen
26.10.05

27th June 2005

Dear Friends,

On the 11th June we have managed to meet for the first time in 2005. The long break has made many wondered if we are still exiting. Well, we are still active, just that we did not manage to come together for a bigger gathering.
It was again a very nice afternoon get-together, even though not all could attend. WeeNee was busy with her children that weekend, Michelle could not get off from work, Lucy was invited to a good friend's birthday, Nydia was busy moving apartment, Ganesh fell sick last minute and Shireen and Frank had to attend grandma's birthday. Nevertheless, it was really great that Mery managed to come and join us for a few hours, although she has to rush back to work after that. Jess and Peter came all the way back from Berlin for the gathering, brought along the mother in-law (Peter's mom). Dewi and Patricia came to join us for the first time. We hope to see you again. We had two more new faces this time, Hannah and Boon Jin. Both students and they came all the way from Oldenburg (4 hours with the train) just for the gathering. We are honoured and really pleased to have you here.
It began at 12noon, first everyone tried to fill up their stomachs with food. Then the action begins, moving around tables, switching places, chatting around and getting to know the new people among us. Fabbrica Italiana is quite a good place for such gathering, even without reservation, I believe it is still possible to meet there in a bigger group spontaneously, without having seating problem. This restaurant is very big and spacious inside, so it is quite an ideal place for us to meet there in future. We could move from one seat to another quite easily and there is also enough standing place for those who wish not to sit down. Furthermore, the food is quite good and reasonable for everyone.
There were 17 of us at the gathering and our lunch lasted till about 3pm. It sounds like a very early ending compared to our previous get-togethers. Well, it did not end there! A few had to leave early and left. The rest of us went to have a "Part 2" at Starbucks Coffee. We continued to chat and have some nice memories of Malaysia and Singapore at Starbucks Coffee. Many Europeans do not understand why we love Starbucks Coffee and got all excited when going for Starbucks Coffee. Well, in Southeast Asia (especially Malaysia and Singapore), places like Coffee Beans and Starbucks Coffee are one of the young people hangouts. These are the places where we used to meet up with friends and chat. Having coffee at Starbucks is like being at home again.
Our next gathering will be on the 6th August. We will take this warm-day opportunity to make either a BBQ or Picnic Afternoon. If you are interested to join us, do look out for more information under EVENT.
Photos of gatherings can be viewed under PHOTO.

 

May 11 2005

Dear Friends,

It seems we have just welcomed the New Year (2005) and celebrated Chinese New Year not too long ago...looking at the calendar, we are in the 5th month of the year. Time really flies!

I would also like to apologise for not being able to update this site for a while. I know many of you have asked, "hey,,,,what happened? Are we still here?!"

Many of you are asking what happen to the Belacan Club gathering? Well, we have met up in a smaller group regularly in Bochum and Gelsenkirchen. For those who are staying in Ruhrgebiet, a spontaneous coffee afternoon and a last minute planned picnic is possible since many times our activities are based on the weather.

Anyway, the next gathering has been planned and it will be on the 11th June 2005. Please find more information under EVENT.

Our last gathering was also the last meeting in 2004. It took place at Bali Rendezvous in Centro Oberhausen. It was about one week before Christmas, so not many of us, just about 10 people. The lunch at Bali Rendezvous was a very unpleasant time for all of us, as some of you might have heard about the story. As usual, I normally would try to be there earlier than others, 10 minutes after we (Joe and I) sat down, we were approached by the waiter in the restaurant, told that we were late and had to give up our table since the rest were not there. After calling the rest knowing that heavy traffic and some were having difficulty in finding a parking. We were of course trying to convince the restaurant manager that people don't come late on purpose. We were basically approached every 10 minutes, being told off, told we could not keep the table because we were late. I was very tempted to leave, but Joe was adamant not to leave and refused to give up our table since we were not told during reservation - not to be late! At that time the restaurant was almost full but not badly crowded. Half an hour later more than half of us had arrived and I was relieved that not just the two of us were occupying and fighting for the long table for 10 people. Nevertheless we were still being approached and told that we were late every 10 minutes and asked to give up the other two small tables which were reserved for another 4 guests. (Our table were joined by these small tables for two). In order to get some peace I agreed to give up only one table. It was unbelievable how such service could happen in an Asian restaurant. We were basically being "halau".

Since when one has to be punctual for makan and how often are you being stopped at the entrance of the restaurant if you are late for the reservation, refused entry and being told off rudely "Sie sind spät!" I presume my table would be given away and receive an apology. Probably the person we would be making a drama is me not the restaurant staffs.

Throughout the lunch we were being stared by the workers because we took so long eating our lunch. Not only that they were really rude when serving us. It would be unfair to them if we just sat and chat without ordering anything. As long as we were in the restaurant we did order drinks and desserts, no one actually were sitting there without having something to eat or drink. We were feeling very uncomfortable the whole time, but we hold on as long as possible till we had enough of the stares and rudeness, we decided to leave the restaurant.

It was very interesting when come to payment. It is a norm in Germany whether it is a small group of two or big group of 10. You will be asked if you wish to pay the bill together or separately. For the first time we were refused a separate bill, the waiter insisted that one person should settle the bill. Of course we insisted to pay either separately or no pay. Very unhappily he sat down and did some mathematic works on another piece of paper. It was also our first time to give no tips after eating in a restaurant. As I walked out of the restaurant I could not help it and told myself "see how long you can survive in Centro and I don't wish to see you here long". Partly I was mad to have to pay for the expensive food with such a bad service, regretting giving them business. Another side I was happy that we did not give in to them, as they wished we should give up the table and leave.

Joe came home that evening and wrote a negative comment to a consumer site and to the restaurant website. He discovered later we were not the only one received such a bad service in Bali Rendezvous, similar critiques were written by other diners as well.

Three weeks ago Joe and I went to Centro for ice-cream and found out Bali Rendezvous was closed for good. It was bad to think I had cursed them, but the truth is Bali Rendezvous does not deserve to stand on the eating Promenade in Centro Oberhausen. I was happy it is not there anymore.

For our coming gathering, we will be meeting up in Fabbrica Italiana, an Italian restaurant in Essen. I have some requests to organize the gathering on Sundays, which is not possible because we have members from far up north Cuxhaven and Frankfurt areas. They come to attend almost every gathering so far. Some drive back home after the gathering and some stay overnight in Gelsenkirchen. Because of this reason, a gathering on Sunday is not so convenient for them. Besides, I have also request to organize the gathering in Köln and Frankfurt. Again, it is difficult for me because I don't live in Frankfurt. There are a few things for me to consider before I can decide which restaurant to meet. For example, parking space, whether the restaurant is children friendly or easy access for wheelchair guest. So, I hope you would understand that the future gatherings will be in Ruhrgebiet.

Our goal is still the same, to have more and more members on the list and hopefully all of us could find friends around where we live and form a smaller group that we could organize a regular gathering to meet up.

Hope to see all of you on the 11th June and catch up with one another then.

ShawFen 11 MAY 2005

26 June 2004

SPRING GET-TOGETHER

On the 29th MAY, Saturday Belacan Club members came together to meet again for the second time. You will see a lot of new faces this time because we have increase of members in the last half a year.
Unfortunately, our friends from the Netherlands who attended our first gathering could not join us this time because of family commitments. Hopefully we will get to see one another again in our next Baju Kurung / Baju Kebaya Night in July or August.
There were about 20 of us attended the Spring Get-Together; 17 adults, 2 children and one baby. Most of us live in Ruhrgebiet (Bochum, Wattenscheid and Gelsenkirchen) except LayLay who drove all the way from Darmstadt. As usual before Saturday some were asking if they could come a bit later or if it was ok to leave the meeting earlier. When we finally met, no one seemed to want to leave earlier. First we went around getting to know one another just a bit and then got our stomachs filled. After that, we could see everyone starting to move around the table, switching places or just standing to chat and getting to know one another. Then follow by photo session, exchange of addresses and emails, it was full of action. It is great that Pagoda Restaurant is spacious enough for us to do that. Time flies before one knew it 4 hours was over and we had to leave the restaurant. This time we managed to pack up and leave the restaurant before kena halau. We could see no one was interested to say goodbye. It is definitely nice that we could have some times to meet once in three months, to spend a Saturday when we could have some Asian food, meet our fellow country people and speak our Malaysian English or Singlish. I believe many of us miss that!



Dear Friends and Visitors of Belacan Club,
We are in the fifth month of the year and everyone is looking forward to the good weather and more sunshine. Especially for those who just came in Winter, when all trees were botak, the sky was always dark and the weather was cold and wet. Today you look out of the window and see flowers blossom and green leaves on the trees, you tell yourself it is so wonderful and beautiful here! Someone emailed me recently to introduce herself, told me she arrived in ‘beautiful’ Bochum in January. Mmmh,,I wonder if she could really see the beauty of Bochum in Winter.

We had our very first get together in January 2004, it was a success and most of us had a good time getting to know one another. We are now ready to meet again for the second time, information under EVENT. The reason why I chose Pagoda Restaurant in Oberhausen is due to the location, convenient for those who live in Ruhrgebiet and the Netherlands. Secondly, Pagodo Restaurant opened for lunch on Saturday.

I want to thank all friends from Hamburg and Munich, who have been keeping up with our progress and giving us all the moral support and courage. Many of you are concern in when we will register as an official cultural club. At the moment we don’t have any plan to do that, but we will definitely consider this in the future when we have more human power and enough volunteers. We have more than 20 listed members in Germany and the Netherlands, the website has served its purpose as a meeting point for members. At the meantime, we will remain as an online community that would come together to meet in Ruhrgebiet once in about 3 to 4 months.

Besides, we are renovating our Recipes Site, we intend to collect more recipes both Asian and European specialities from our members. In this way we could share a bit of our eating culture with those who do not know about our foods and at the same time tell our stories to our friends by showing them the new kind of food we have adopted in our daily diet.

If you are curious about us, do come and join us this coming Saturday, the 29th MAY. Looking forward to seeing you soon!
ShawFen Frohsz 21.05.2004

31 Jan 2004
CHINESE NEW YEAR CELEBRATION
One year ago we were talking about the idea of the Belacan Club, words have been spreading around and we have been found by those who were interested in getting to know us through Internet.

On the 24th January 2004, exactly one year later we have managed to come together and took the opportunities of Chinese New Year celebration to meet for the first time. The gathering took place in Pagoda Buffet Restaurant in Oberhausen (Ruhrgebiet). The lunch started at noon, guests arrived between 1200 to 1pm. Pagoda Restaurant offers different varieties of Asian food, for example, fried noodle, fried rice, beef in black bean sauce and curry. There were dishes without pork and dishes for vegetarians. Although the food was non halal, it was possible to find non-pork dishes for Muslim friends.

First we introduced ourselves, found a cosy corner to be seated and the next thing we did was marching to the buffet bar to get food to fill up our hungry stomachs. As always makan comes first, I guess this is part of our Asian culture. : After makan I could see people moving around the table to get to know one another. I must say it didn't take us long to break the ice and started finding out about one another and told our stories how we ended up in Europe.

Most of us who attended the lunch live in NRW and the Netherlands. Musliha has gathered her Dutch gang living in Geleen and Eindhoven, driven about 2 hours to come for the gathering. We were glad to have all of them here, Suziana, Jacques and the kids, Musliha (brought along David's regards), Rosie and Raymond, Masliah and hubby. Besides that, it was an honour to have Michelle and Frank came all the way from up north Cuxhaven. From NRW we have Shireen, Frank and Vanessa, plus Joe and I. There were 17 of us inclusive of 3 kids. We are mixed Singaporean/Dutch, Malaysian/Dutch, Singaporean/German and Malaysian/German couples.

For those of you who intended to join but could not come because of some other commitments, might be curious to find out which part of Malaysia these fellow Malaysians came from?? We have orang KL, Kelantan, Pahang, Sabah and last but not least our neighbour orang Singapura. If you would like to be informed when we have the next gathering or celebration, do drop me a mail at shawfen@frohsz.de

Except for Musliha, Raymond and Rosie who had to leave early, most of us stayed on to continue the 'chatting and eating' session till 5pm. Children were playing, adults were eating and talking, no one seemed tire (actually the kids were kaput) and wanted to go home. We had totally lost track of the time. At about 4.45pm the restaurant waitress came and reminded us that lunch buffet was closed, they had to clear the table by 5.30pm and we should settle the bill. Only after the second reminder, we started to pack up ……kalau tak kena halau, we would probably stay till dinner buffet!

It was definitely a memorable afternoon for all of us and we hope to have more of such gatherings in the near future.

ShawFen and the Belacan Club Team

 

6 Jan 2004
Dear Friends and Visitors of Belacan Club,
First of all, I would like to wish everyone of you a Happy New Year. Hope the year 2004 will be a good one for all of you. May it be a good year for those who are planning to move and start a new life in Europe. All the best to those who have already settled down and are in the process of finding a job.
The past two to three months were very busy for most of us. Some of us have been home (to Malaysia or Singapore) for a long holiday, visited family and friends. But more importantly to refill our energies and refresh our minds, of course with the local food and the Asian fresh air. Most of us flew back to Europe before Christmas in order to be able to spend this special day with our families here. I have been away for about 3 months and flew back to Germany just three weeks to Christmas, it was a rush, rush after that. Rushing to complete my Christmas shopping list and cracked my head for the Christmas menu. I guess many of you have experienced that!
Chinese New Year is just around the corner. I believe you could still remember this important celebration of our Chinese friends in our homeland. We will be celebrating Chinese New Year! We celebrate not only Chinese New Year, we are taking this opportunity to gather and meet for the first time. There will be members and friends from Netherlands and Germany coming for this celebration. Information under Event. If you would like to get to know us, do come and join us. ShawFen and the Belacan Club Team

20 AUG 2003
Dear Friend of Belacan Club,
Time flies, without realising it, it is almost end of August now. Knowing that most of you are busy enjoying this great Summer and travelling at the moment. Wishing all of you a great Summer holiday. During the past 3 months, we have increase of members in the list, with 10 members now in our online community. It is indeed very encouraging, although it has taken a while to get more response and not all who emailed me to inquire about the club were interested to join us. I would like to welcome 3 latest members, May Chladni, Daljeet Singh from Malaysia and Sasha Salleh from Singapore. Special thanks also to Sasha who was willing to share with us her ideas and comments on how to make our online community more interesting and informative. A site for Members’ Profile has been created to tell a little story about each member, hopefully this will help us to know one another better and encourage interaction among members. I have managed to write about a few of you that I have known a bit better and met before. It would be nice if you could write me a short Mail about yourself and a small piece of your history of how you came to live in Germany. Some information that I could put it on the Website. A photo attached would be appreciated but not a must! It is also ok if you prefer to put a family photo of yours. I have managed to meet up with May Chladni some time end of JUN in Ulm. We had a great time together and it was great getting to know one another and our family better. A photo of us by the Donau (Danube) can be seen under May’s profile. I have started a Recipes Section, basically recipes I collected from friends and cooking I have learned from my mom. Many of us used to live in a „Makan paradise" where hawker stalls were just a few steps away, so why bother to cook? It is a different world and taste here, we have to learn how to cook our favourite dishes. As a result, our conversations over the phone with our Asian friends about food and exchanging recipes were unavoidable. If you do have the time to share and write us your recipes, I would like to welcome your contributions. It is also the wish of our new comers in Germany, to learn and read some tips and stories of our friends who have been here for a long time. Tips and advice on adjusting to a new country and new life in Germany. Your experience dealing with the locals and your point of views about life and people in Germany for the Life In Germany Section. I will be going for a long holiday from 20th Sept to 30th Nov 2003, keep your Emails, ideas, stories , recipes and letters coming. I will work on them and write back when I return in November.
Nicole ShawFen Frohsz shawfen@frohsz.de

13 MAY 2003

Four months into this project, our idea, Belacan Club for Malaysians and Singaporeans to form a community within the distance of 50 to 100km from where they live. We have at the moment 8 listed members. Although we are not near one another, I believe we would be able to meet one day.
Thanks to the modern technology, I’ve also discovered some Malaysians Clubs and Malaysians/Singaporeans Communities in Germany. It’s wonderful what Internet could do to change a person’s life, to bridge human beings and bring them closer to one another. You can find a list of the clubs here on the Links-Page. I hope it would help to lead you finding one nearby where you live.
Besides that, if anyone of you are interested in knowing other international couples, there is an online Europe Asia Community. www.euroasia.dk
It’s a pleasure to know all of you and I want to thank you for putting your hands out to be reached!
Yours sincerely, Nicole ShawFen Frohsz 13 MAY 2003

15.02.2003

One month after we told the idea of Belacan Club through Internet and word of mouth, we are now proudly to announce that this club is formed with 4 members. I personally feel that this is a good start. We’ve also received good comments and encouragement from friends about this idea and our desire to build a network in Germany/Europe.

Besides that, we got Emails from non-Malaysian friends who like to be informed when we organise a meeting. Those who have requested will definitely be informed.

We were also asked if non-Malaysia couples are allowed to register. Well, as stated in the Club Objective, anyone who likes to get to know our culture and people is welcome.

At the moment, we still don’t have any planning for gathering and event. If anyone of you have any suggestion, please drop me an Email, regarding what, where and when. Those of you who don’t have Internet access can write, call or sms me. I will also keep you updated of our activities by snail Mail and calls. Our Homepage got listed in Google search engine two days ago and we hope it will also get on Yahoo soon. We hope to get more members once we get ourselves known. Right now, we are still in the process of membership drive!
Shaw Fen (Nicole)

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