After running in the early morning with Chinese Malaysian friends, we enjoyed our Chinese tea and Malaysian white coffee.

We had planned to run at 6:30 a.m. but it was raining so we waited in a canteen and drank coffees. The rain almost stopped at 7:00 a.m., and we started running. We ran 9 kilometers within 55 minutes. During the first half, I panted a lot and worried that I couldn’t catch up with the others. But during the second half, my breathing rhythms kept stable and I made it.

After the run, we were relaxed. We sat around a table in the yard and drank Chinese tea. They were all Chinese Malaysian. They spoken Hokkien with each other and Mandarin with me. I can’t understand Hokkien because it's a dialect spoken in some areas of Southeast China, and quite different from my hometown dialect and Mandarin. The yard was surrounded by short trees. There were shelves made of bamboo to hang green plants. The ground was covered with small stones to avoid being muddy. And there were two large clay water vats with small fishes inside.

We ate sandwiches and drank white coffee as breakfast. White coffee is a type of Southeast Asian coffee, popular in Penang. It is cheap and people drink it regularly.