CHAPTERS on Don't be a dick

Are most people, deep down, nice people?

Is it naive to believe that most people, deep down, are nice? When is the last time you came across somebody truly rubbish? Spoiler alert, for me, it was a couple of weeks ago. And the experience has made me question, how much should we really give people the benefit of the doubt?

Let me rewind a second. When we were travelling in Malaysia we got obsessed with a dish called Char Kway Teow. It’s a delicious combination of stir fried flat rice noodles with sweet soy and garlic and some kind of Chinese sausage. Seriously, addictive. So we thought it would be fun to learn how to make it ourselves. We found a cooking teacher on Trip Advisor who had won a competition in Malaysia for making this dish and organised to take his class. What could possibly go wrong?!

Chef Samuel picked us up around mid-morning and as the door of his little white car rattled shut, the atmosphere immediately changed. 'Sorry we're late!' James said, attempting to break the tension emanating from this stranger in the drivers seat.

We had just been to look around The Blue Mansion, a heritage site in George Town. After a painful pause, Samuel finally asked, "how was the tour?" Relieved at this attempt to be friendly we chirped, 'yeah great thanks, yeah really interesting!' He shook his head, "hmm, Blue House not a very good one, Perankian house much better." James and I exchanged a glance. "Where else have you been?" he asked us. We said the viewing point on Penang Hill."Oh no, Penang Hill,” he sighed “I don't like, it is so boring.' I got defensively positive to counteract his attitude. “I thought it was really beautiful! We had great weather and an amazingly clear view of the city.”

“Oh you had a clear view,” he sounded sceptical, “well you must be lucky.' As we turned a corner, Penang Hill came into view directly ahead. It was covered in dark grey clouds as if to illustrate his point. “Look, it’s raining on Penang Hill now.” He could have added a “ha! Told you so.” But that might have involved him cracking a smile.

James changed the subject, “so how long have you lived in George Town?” Chef Samuel said he had moved to the capital from the mainland eight years ago."Oh wow you must like it to stay eight years." I made the mistake of adding. " No I hate it.” He fumed. “Especially the traffic. And the food has changed, it is a lot worse."

I started to deeply regret signing up for this, but I was convinced he would cheer up once we were out of the car and into the cooking. Maybe he just had road rage? He’ll be like a different person in the kitchen, I was sure of it.

I shouldn’t have been. It gets worse.

The class began with grocery shopping for ingredients at a local market. We pulled into the car park and Samuel reversed into a tight space between two cars, despite there being plenty of empty spaces. I tried to carefully open the car door but with little room to manoeuvre I clunked it into the car next to us, praying he hadn’t noticed.

We walked up to the entrance of the food market and he stopped at the doorway to give us some info. "This market is very local, you are the only tourists here." I looked around wondering if that was a good thing in the current circumstances. When I looked back to him he was staring at me angrily, "why do you look like this?” Without being able to see my own face, I wasn’t quite sure what he meant. "Your face looks so boring." He clarified. I was lost for words, literally, so didn’t say anything. Suddenly feeling less guilty about clanging his car door. He pressed the point, "You look so tired and boring!” My sarcastic reply was completely lost in translation and the awkwardness levels rose even further. I felt like we were in an episode of MTV Punk’d.

When he asked if we had a time limit for today’s class I jumped at the chance to say,"we don't want to spend hours and hours," then under my breath added, "with you." One saving grace was that the market was wonderful. Fresh fish, rainbows of colourful fruit and vegetables, food and drinks stalls. It was spacious, not too crowded and to my relief, super clean. None of the flies hovering over towers of dead crickets or skewered frogs like I'd seen in the markets of Thailand and South Korea. Chef Samuel found us a plastic table and chairs to sit at while he got some snacks to gauge our tolerance for spice. I buckled up to lose my tase buds for the rest of the trip but the snacks were so good that I almost forgave him for the comments about my boring face.

Things were looking up until James made the mistake of revealing how much we loved the restaurant we’d eaten at the night before. "DISGUSTING." Samuel retorted. "I don't know how that place got a Michelin star." Deflated, we returned to the car where the insults continued to roll off his tongue. “Oh you’re going to Singapore next!?” He choked. “It is like a prison.”

When we got to his kitchen studio he gave us three recipes printed landscape on A4 and stapled neatly together. Here we go, I thought, now he’ll live up to his five-star website reviews. But no. He told us we must not follow these recipes. He had adapted them to his own style which he claimed, “people always preferred.”He leaned even further into an angry Chef character now, using expletives to describe tastes, 'fucking salty’ this and 'fucking strong' that. I wondered if his favourite chef was Gordon Ramsay and we’d found ourselves in a Malaysian version of Kitchen Nightmares.

To make matters worse, the kitchen had only one ceiling fan fighting against 32C degree weather and three gas hob flames. I waited for a pot of rice to boil and wondered if the blood in my veins might bubble up quicker. "Your face is very red."He remarked. I wasn’t sure if this was better or worse than ‘boring.’ I looked at James in despair and said 'yep, that’s because I'm very hot.' Avoiding any use of confusing sarcasm this time.

While I wilted he demonstrated his superior capacity for coping with the heat by bragging, “I go boxing in this weather.” I had noticed the Muhammad Ali background on his phone and the punchbag hanging outside the bathroom door. “Do you compete?” I asked. He said he couldn’t anymore because he has a family. Clearly he saved the metaphorical knock out blows to the face for unsuspecting tourists like me.

We made a claypot chicken with rice, seabass baked in homemade sambal, as well as the award winning noodle dish. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten so fast in my life. To be fair, the food was beautiful. We offered to share it with him but chef Samuel shook a plastic protein bottle at us in demonstration of his liquid diet saying, without a shred of irony, “I don’t eat.”

Every last ebb of uncertainty about this man’s character had left my body. I’d wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. I’d made excuses for his rude comments and bad attitude with theories about the traffic, our lateness or the language barrier. Until concluding that, actually, some people are just dicks.