the first day of the new year, we joined the convoy of nice, nice 2 and nice++ buses up the highway to the shimmery hot centre of kuala lumpur. it was past lunchtime when we finally arrived at my grandmother’s house, but lunch was there waiting for us.

just in the door, we caught up with our once-a-year cousins on the unyielding rosewood chairs, but our mother, always straight to the point, was already at the big round table, hunched over a small bowl of new year noodles. what it is, is meesua, roughly hewn bits of chicken, and a whole, perfectly hard-boiled egg. it was only the first of many meals to come.

because what else is there to do when it’s shimmery hot outside? we did venture out, full of bravado, to the playground across the street one morning, but we were quickly humbled. so we visited the old aunts, the ones who confuse us year after year. third grandaunt on the grandmother’s side? fifth grandaunt on the grandfather’s side? i thought i had it finally worked out, but now… nothing. next year, we start again.

one thing that is constant: the glass jars of salty pistachios. the kid discovered a taste for them, and a monkey-like trick to open each nut with the half-shell of the preceeding one. anything else was a random bonus: sarsparilla cordial, or van houten scorched almonds, each one coated in a thick shell of wax-glazed milk chocolate. twenty years can go by, and these are the tastes you remember. soft, juicy dragonfruits, an unnerving red on the inside — these are new, but whisked out of a gentle aunt’s well-stocked fridge, they are slurped up, already a favourite.

and every few hours, it seemed, we returned to our grandmother’s house for another feast. one lunchtime it was assam laksa, the ingredients meticulously sliced and laid out for fine-tuning the flavour; the pungent broth simmering in an enamel cauldron just beside. one lunchtime — our last — there was a fish, and acar, and otak otak. stuffed crabs and lobak. jiu hu char wrapped in lettuce leaves. two soups: one of porkribs and salted vegetable, and the other an innocuous broth of pig intestines. three generations of relatives came and ate in three waves, and i sat through them all.

there was a neverending jelly, multilayered, and each layer tasting of itself: coffee, or evaporated milk. pink even… we made it down to the last sliver on the afternoon we left, sitting around the big round table with our once-a-year cousins. the older one talked about the iron man competition she is confronting in a couple of weeks; the younger one whisked the paiseh portion — left purely to be polite — out from under our noses.