How To Ask For A Table And More Chairs in Malaysian and Indonesian Restaurants

Problem
Indoors or outdoors? Outdoors for fresh air. Outdoors if you want to smoke.
Indoors if you don't want to be near smokers. Indoors if you are hot and want the air conditioning.

TABLES
indoors - dalam ruangan
outdoors - di luar ruangan
in the sun - di bawah sinar matahari - (sun - Matahari, nickname of dancer)
in the shade - di bawah - naugan
is this one ok? - apakah ini baik-baik saj

I need a table - saya butuh maja
saya - I
butuh - need
maja - table
I need a chair - saya butuh kursi
kursi - chair
two chairs - dua kursi
three chairs - tiga
four chairs - empat

Numbers one, two, three, four
satu dua tiga empat

a big table - sebuah meja besar
about ten of us - sekitar sepuluh dari kita
it's a celebration - ini sebuah paryaan
a birthday - ini ulang tahun
its a wedding anniversary - ini adalah hari jadi pernikahan

Useful Websites
LANGUAGES
amazon - books including phrasebooks and dictionaries from Berlitz, Lonely Planet and others.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=malay+language
This is the UK website. You may find different books and prices and postage on
Amazon.com
Duolingo - free language courses and discussion forums
https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/20796214/Malay-Basics-1
Duolingo also have tinycards. These flashcards reverse when you click and then ask you to select from three multiple choice answers.
https://tinycards.duolingo.com/decks/Seft5g/malay?lesson=1

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english-malaysian/one_1

TRAVEL

visitsingapore.com
singaporeair.com (Singapore Airlines is part of Star Alliance. Collect airmiles and use airmiles for flights.)
visit-malaysia.com

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, teacher or English and other languages. Contact me if you need a lesson or workshop.

Thanksgiving and Design

In America it's Thanksgiving, third Thursday in November. 

(Canada holds Thanksgiving on another date, the second Monday of October. Tied to the end of the harvest season, in the north, that is several weeks before America's holiday. Oct 12 2026. Oct 11th 2027, October 9th 2028, according to Farmers' Almanac.) 

Thanksgiving for Americans, is thanks for arriving safely across the Ocean, surviving a year in a new country. The year after they arrived, they celebrated the anniversary of their safe arrival, and survival.

In London, thanks to everybody who had contributed to designs and museums through the ages. Everybody you look at or use was designed by somebody. The bus. the bus stop. The train. The art deco stations. The museums.

Each generation has new ideas. New ideas on chairs, a cushion on the floor, a block of wood, a solid tub, a back, with legs. Upholstered. Plastic and wipe-clean.

A table of wood or plastic, on legs, with room for your legs underneath. A mirror on top for a dressing table. A desk with a pull out place for your coffee. A ledge or pull-out for your laptop. Straight, or curved top.

The 2016 glass-topped tables create a feeling of space in small rooms. But, as a landlady, I won't buy them, because a tenant might break them.

In the UK The Design Museum has re-opened in a grand new venue in London.

What I found interesting is that it does not attempt to choose good design, but rather to show a history of how design has changed, whether good or bad, a true museum.

I happen to think that art deco of the Thirties was graceful, elegant, wonderful. The Fifties, yuk, utilitarian, looks awful. I hate those spindly diagonal legs on furniture. Wood changes to wood chip. Plastic table tops and trays. Chairs no longer have upright backs but slope backwards so you get an L shape neck, hunchbacks and dowager's hump. Cheap backless bench seating encouraging slumping.

Thirties cups were an improvement. V shape. Easier to clean inside. Easier to look inside and check they are clean.

The Thirties? Beautiful buildings. White with green tiled roofs. However, flat roof houses and block of flats, introduced in the Nineteen Thirties are a design disaster in a rainy country. Anybody who studies history or has lived in a flat roof dwelling knows they are prone to leaking roofs. I've had leaks in blocks of flats where I lived in Singapore and London. Also a relative (Uncle Jack, a deceased relative my marriage) said he was nearly bankrupted by the cost of repairing his house which he eventually sold after years of problems.

I just came back from Umbria. The oldest churches were susceptible to earthquake damage. So were the oldest houses. Medieval buildings in the UK have been destroyed by fire this year. New buildings in America and worldwide are designed to be earthquake proof. Our thanks to all the designers and architects who have made buildings safer.

Useful Website

http://designmuseum.org

Angela Lansbury, author, travel writer, speaker.

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Cellar Gascon Wine Bar and Restaurant

Cellar Gasgon is part of a group of three restaurants.

This one is corridor style with seating along the windows and a bar on the other long side. Toilets are downstairs.

I am not a fan of bar stools, but I preferred them to the window banquettes which sloped forward, were too short for my legs, and they looked shiny and I kept sliding off. Long legged male diners either perched on the edge or used their long legs to brace and anchor themselves. 

Tables were so close together I was in danger of sweeping the four to six glasses per setting onto the floor as I passed. It happened when I tried to go in, then when I tried to get out to the toilet. When I came back I did not want to stress myself and everybody else again.   I transferred to the bar stool type chair.

We parked our coats, bags and rucksacks on the narrow window ledge behind.  A few seats of the same design as the bar stools but low enough for you to put your feet on the ground are at the far end and by the entrance door. I must remember to request one of these tables, although I think these tables are for four.

The set menu was four courses and four glasses of wine for about £40 per person. Many central London restaurants offer set lunches of two or three courses with a glass of wine for about £20. But £40 for dinner, four courses, including wine, is good value. This is especially good value for a speciality gourmet restaurant in central London.

Small pieces of brown bread were elegantly served on small squares of slate. The butter was served in the centre of another straight sided piece of slate. A change from curves, though I prefer cured crockery, I suppose square and oblong is easier to stack on a straight sided shelf.

I've looked into buying slate for home. I've check in supermarkets such as Waitrose. It's not cheap. 

The slate pieces are dark, so you can't see if they are clean, but also rough if you want to run your fingers over to check. The small ones look mean, but the large ones are heavy to carry. Slate is fine, amusing as a change and a treat - in a restaurant.

The starter was squid. I'm allergic to shellfish. I am OK with eel. We debated whether squid was a risk. I decided against it. There was no alternative menu, no choice. I ate around the squid.

The second course was the high point of the four dishes. Foie gras. Like many people, I have been influenced by the campaign against it. I think I've had it before and not been impressed that it was worth either the extra expense or the possible suffering of the animal, or bird. However, I do like chicken liver and this was grilled on the outside, like a soft chicken liver, with the most delightful extra flavours in the sauce. 

The sauce was so nice that I broke off bits of brown bread to scrape the last tasty morsels off the plate. British diners don't wipe their plates with bread. But the French do. Gascon is an area of France. (The Gascons or Basques are also in Spain. Not in the capital city. More rural, practical.) I sneaked a peek. Nobody was watching me disapprovingly. In fact, everybody else was doing the same.

The main course was lamb casserole with beans and barley. Lamb a bit gristly and fatty, but all in all very good.

Here's dessert, pineapple with ice cream and a few specks of crumble. 

After four glasses of wine and delicious food I had forgotten my initial problems with the seats and seating close to others. Tables so near others enable you to chat more easily to couples either side. Would we go back? Definitely.

www.cellargascon.com

More pictures and story tomorrow.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.