Adrian's Journey

Grandma

2010-09-21T17:12:00.005+08:00

It's always when we lost someone when we realised how much we appreciate them. We tend to take thing for granted and until the day came, then memory of the past started to flash back on us. It's on that very time when we started to miss the person so dearly.

I last visited her last month at her home. She looks tired and ill. I was quite busy with my new home but somehow managed to take some time to go back and visit her. I must say that I am truly glad that I did that. It's then after pass few week that she has left the world. Seriously, I was shocked to receive the bad news from my dad on Sunday morning.

Thursday morning will be her last journey on earth and she will return back with God. I will be back on Wednesday night and will be sending her off on Thursday morning 11am. Wednesday will be the last day to mourn for her death.

When death happens at our near relative, we started to think how fragile life could be. Somehow we will only remember it for a few weeks then we easily tend to forget that life is so fragile. We tend to forget how beautiful the day was, how green the leaf is and how blue the skies are. We need to press pause in our life sometime to think of all this and to be grateful that we still could still breath the air.

To Grandma, I am sorry that I only visited you no more than 5 fingers per year. Please bless and guide us from the above. We will always miss you dearly....

A house called home

2010-09-18T12:24:00.001+08:00

It has been passed few months when we make a purchase on our dream house in Setia Alam. Rewinding back to the past, we search and hunt everywhere including Puchong, Kota Kemuning, Shah Alam, Kepong, Subang, Putra Height and many more for our future house. We finally found our dream house at Setia Alam bearing house No 21 and purchase date on 21st March. Coincidentally my birthday is also 21st July. So I guess I really have some fate with no 21. We did all the necessary steps to get it done. The sales and purchase goes smoothly and we got the key on early of July.

It was a pure joy moment and we work hard on our new home. It was in a total messy condition and it took a lot of our time, effort and energy starting from zero. A lot of discussion, planning, and budget all come into action. We even ask our friend to give some interior design idea. When everything is up, we did what most of a renovation will needs to do first. Wiring. Additional point, concealed most of the wiring into the wall, downlight and lots more. Then hacking and replacing 1x1 ceramic tiles to 2x2 homogeneous tiles in living room, walls hacking, and finally painting. We thought of using Nippon paint but ended up using ICI Dulux. Partition and built in furniture is the next thing we did. Together on the same day, the lighting and fan was fitted in and final touch up on the paint. Luckily our neighbour introduce us a good indonesian painter. Really recommended! Cheap and very reliable. We called him come over for minor touch up for over 10 times. Haha. The moment you hang up the phone, he almost reach our home. That’s what I call efficient. Pakno is his name.

Next steps are furniture. We spend quite a lot of time hunting for furniture, dining table and sofa and even go to exhibition such as Perfect Living in PWTC. Finally we have collateral idea on the furniture and bought it home. Then slowly we work out on electrical goods such as fridge, washing machine, TV and voila, I will be moving in today. Official date is actually on 1 Malaysia day which is 16 Sept. Some ask us is it a selected good day? Well, nah, it just a public holiday and we thought 1 Malaysia day is a good day to move in. Haha. But the actual date is actually today where I will be start staying there for good.

Wow, it really kills a lot of time and energy starting from zero even it's a subsale unit. We are really relieve as it’s finally over and the result really satisfied us. There is still lots of thing haven’t do yet but heck, money didn’t rain from heaven. So slowly we will start saving again and will do it in future.

Finally a chapter in my blog saying that I have a house that I can call home.

HTC HD Mini in da house

2010-06-21T19:26:00.000+08:00

Lately Daph old faithful Nokia 5310 Music Express is giving up the last breath. The battery has worn out. S we went to Low Yat to search for an ideal phone for her. We had in mind on that time is Nokia N97 Mini, BB 9700, Iphone 3GS and HTC.

After loitering and tested a few phone there, alas she concluded that she wanted to try touch screen phone. No point getting back a basic phone she thought. Blackberry Bold 9700 came close after HTC. N97 mini out as the form factor is a little too bulky. Iphone 3gs is out of budget. We even tested some Android phone from Acer. After deep and long consideration, she got down to HTC model. The form factor plays a major role here as she prefers this HTC HD Mini over other brand like the bulky N97 Mini. It only weight about 110g which is 18g lighter than my Nokia E72. Then, she compared HTC Touch 2 and HTC HD Mini.

She choose HTC HD mini over HTC Touch 2 mainly because of the screen resolution. The HTC HD mini displays a superbly vivid colour over Touch 2. It also has the function of pinch to zoom, flip and others. It run on a higher CPU speed of 600Mhz. HTC HD mini platform is Winmo 6.5.3 and is not upgradeable to future Winmo 7. Anyway, I am sure there will be cook ROM at XDA Developer once Winmo 7 is launch.

Winmo 6.5.3 with HTC Sense really blows me away. I remembered my first and the only Winmo phone I owned, an O2 XDA II Mini. That time Winmo 2003 is consider as latest OS. Fast forward to today, Winmo 6.5.3 with HTC Sense look simply marvelous. It support multi touch function, accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate and a proximity sensor for auto turn down volume when you pick up the phone. There is lot of small thing that make life easier. The most notable is under one contact you can click into it and it will show records of all activity you had with that particular person. There are records of all sms conversation you had, calling log and others. Neat indeed! It's really a fun phone to explore with.

The only cons which are consider a major con to me is touch screen keypad sms! I still hate to sms by using a touch screen keypad. I can only manage to type accurately by slowly touch each of the alphabet. I also hate that one need to end task to free some memory space as there is no proper ‘X’ (kill) application button.

Overall, I enjoyed using this HTC HD Mini. These phones really impress me a lot and have changed my view towards Winmo. Maybe this was due to HTC Sense UI. Daph still a little bit struggling using her first touch screen phone. Can't blame her though as it was quite a big jump from a friendly user Nokia 5310 to a sophisticate and technology advance HTC HD mini. Just give her sometime and I am sure she will get used to it.

Nokia E72 in da house

2010-04-26T19:41:00.003+08:00

Lately my old faithful Nokia 7210 is a little bit sot sot tei. Sometime it just hang there without me knowing it. Until i restart my phone then it back to normal but with lots of misscall. So i thought of changing the phone.

So off we went to Lowyat. At first I just want to get E71 Ap phone. It cost roughly around Rm850 only. But then Daph bising bising and physco physco a bit E72 latest, blah blah, long term, blah... then beh tahan lor.. Haha. Actually hati also tak tenteram one. I myself want E72 but then mahal mah.. Thought of E71 also cukup la.. Sekadar mampu..

So i ask ask la the sales person and she blah blah E72 power maut, double processor speed la, opti navi la, 5mp la = winrar. So termakan her kata kata also la.. haha.
Started asking how much it cost and supprisingly she told me Rm1020 only for AP phone. Warranty 15m for the phone and accesories only 1 month. Then thinking that this might be my long term phone, i ask her how much a Zitron original one cost. Final price are Rm1190. No matter how i push it down, she wont budge from that price. She ask me to go survey other place first as she said it's the lowest price liau. Zitron in Nokia Center selling RM1499 while Melaka Nokia Center selling it for RM1599. She told me that everything in the package is original form Zitron and even the emei number is the same in the box with the phone. She even said that i can bring this phone for repair in any nokia center.

Ended up buying this E72 yesterday. Colour is Metal Grey. I am loving it so much. I have been using basic nokia phone for almost 2 years liau. Before this i was using Nokia 2640, then China Iphone, then Nokia 7210. Wow, i must say that i really ketinggalan zaman. Nowadays smartphone really canggih.. Became a bit sua ku. Anyway, it doesnt take long for an ex-veteran to get used to the canggihness la..

Cut the crap, where is the review dude? Err, I am little bit malas to write the review lor. Furthermore only use for 2 days nia. Later if ada semangat then i might write the review la. Nowadays a bit malas to blog liau. Tweeting making blogging looked 'cheong hei'

Hmm, also some reader might be thinking why all the broken english liau. Aiyah, casual la. So formal for what? Why so seriousssss? :P

A New Chapter

2010-04-03T13:05:00.002+08:00

Idea, changes, agreed, search, find, view, search, view, research, more view, sad, miss, worried, hardwork, trouble,confused, different path, shock, give up, light, hope, found, view, colleteral idea, agreed, worried, joy, hypothetical, waiting, worried, approved, joy, worried, legal, happy, waiting, worried, OVER...

Now is the time to wait. It's time for a countdown!

Bali - Day 4

2010-01-28T20:30:00.006+08:00

Today morning we woke up around 8am and head to Sukawati market via Sanur. It rain quite heavily when we head out. Rain does not stop us as we are well prepared and put on plastic rain coat. We would have lost our way again if it’s not without a super helpful stranger. We were at traffic light when he saw us looking at the map and ask us where we are heading to. He then told us how to go there in details and we thank him very much. 10 minutes later we saw him riding behind us and later overtook our bike. He waves us to follow him and led us all the way to Sukawati. I was of course a little worried and skeptical as he is too helpful. I set myself guard mode ON and if there is any sense of danger I would ride off rather than following him. This local guy is too good to be true. We reached Sukawati parking in no time after being led by him. He then rides off continuing his journey to his home in Ubud. We keep on saying thank you to his generous help. In every corner of the world, I now believe there is still a genuine good stranger exists but somehow, you still need to be careful.

We bought a lot of thing in Sukawati market with the price of peanut. A Bali T-shirt easily cost only Rm5 and all their souvenir are rather cheap too. Anyway, you need to bargain hard by slashing off 70% of the original price. The art clone drawing is cheap and nice too. Daph vowed to come here again to get home deco next time. We spend about 2 and half hours here for shopping spree. I keep on asking Daph to move on otherwise we need a lorry back to Legian. Haha. Mind you it is not easy to carry all the thing we bought by using motorbike all the way back to Legian. Thank God it didn’t rain when we ride back.

We stopped by Mc. Donald in Sanur to have our lunch and later reached Kuta beach at 2.30pm. We did ask a few locals on our way back just to double confirm our way back to Legian. We spend a few minutes here looking at surfers in Kuta beach. We later head back to Tune Legian and have a rest.

Around 5.30pm, we head to Lia Café in Jimbaran Bay for our second times. We were shocked to see the package A we took last 3 days has turned from Rp180k to Rp220k. Straight I ask the waiter and he apologize and quickly change to another menu which is identical on the cover menu but different in the inside price. Dun get me wrong, Lia Café is still the cheapest and delicious seafood in Jimbaran compared to other blood sucking restaurant. Other restaurant easily cost Rp350k. We really love Jimbaran very much. Finally we get to see the beauty of sunset while enjoying our seafood dinner by the beachside.

We then head to Kuta sightseeing the busy night town. Then we head to Legian and visited the famous and highly recommended Warung Made by forumer. We ordered their pork sate, coconut milk blended and avocado juice. Talking about avocado juice, I kinda miss it very much. Hmm, I wonder where we could get it here in Malaysia. We went back around 11.15pm and call it a day. What a tiring but fun day today!

Bali - Day 3

2010-01-27T22:17:00.001+08:00

We were fetched by Wayan Suparta around 9.30am and he apologizes for his lateness as he went to the wrong Tune hotel which is in Kuta beach. Wayan Suparta is a quite type of person which you ask a question only he will answer one. No initiative to start conversation or whatsoever unlike Ditta. We are a little disappointed with a super boring tour guide.

We went to Tanah Lot this morning and immediately like the place so much. No wonder it's one of a 'must visit' places in Bali. Most people will go during evening to enjoy sunset view but it could get pretty crowdie during that time. Tanah Lot is a rock formation off the Indonesian island of Bali. It is home of a pilgrimage temple. Tanah Lot means "Land in the sea" in Balinese language. I heard that one third of the rock in Tanah Lot are actually using artificial rock as in 1980 the temple’s rock face was starting to crumble and the area around and inside the temple started to become dangerous. We spend about an hour here.

We reached Puncak Sari Restaurant around 1.30pm and we were simply being carried away by the beauty of Kintamani Volcano. We could see this active volcano in this restaurant although it was quite foggy. The buffet spread here are just an average Joe standard. Nothing to shout about but still acceptable. What we paid is for the view and not the lunch. Superb panorama view minus the foggy weather!

Our next destination is Pura Tirta Empul. The main attraction here is a long rectangular pool carved of stone. Worshippers first make an offering at the temple, then climb into the main pool to bath and pray. Many collect the holy water in bottles to take home. One thing to note here is when leaving this temple, the path will only have one way out which will direct you into a planned set of Balinese souvenir shop. Smart move eh? Same goes to Tanah Lot too. The seller will try to pull and beg you and make a 20cent face just to get you buying some souvenir. I suggest you not to buy it here instead get it at much much cheaper price at Sukawati market.

Our next stop is Tegalalang Rice Terrace. It is one of the most popular rice terraces to visit. The padi are well planted layered by layered thus creating a terrace view. Very greenish and beautiful indeed.

We took our dinner in Bebek Bengil aka Dirty Duck at Ubud. Why do they call is dirty duck, just Google to get your answer. We ordered a set of Crispy Bebek Bengil as Smoked duck need to pre book a day in advance. A lot of recommendation for this restaurant but somehow I dun quite like the crispy duck. The duck smell is too strong. Give me fried crispy chicken anytime. We wasn't expecting a beautifully spacious landscape overlooking padi field and well decorated restaurant at first, but when we step in, it's really one of its kinds. I haven't seen such a nice and well planned restaurant before.

We reached Tune Legian around 8pm, took a bath and out we went to Kuta beach. Walk around the street and beach and later settled down at Hard Rock Cafe. My first time visiting HRC. I always wanted to go Hard Rock and this time we really made it there. Nice ambient but too cold. There is a live band going on at 11pm. We couldn’t stand as it's too cold. Ended up going upstairs and out to an open air space. Luckily we did go upstairs as we could see the magnificent and prestigious Hard Rock Hotel located just beside HRC. We could see a man made beach exclusive for the hotel guest. Wow, very nice indeed! Btw, the drink isn’t cheap at all. Rm80++ for two glasses of non alcohol drink! Caught me by surprise too, Lolz. No wonder only Caucasians can be seen rinking and dining here. We left HRC and head back to Tune Legian before the live band start as we are kinda tired.

Bali - Day 2

2010-01-25T19:27:00.018+08:00

Today Wayan Ditta fetches us around 9.00am from Tune Hotel and we headed to Pura Taman Ayun. The journey took us about an hour from Legian. Taman Ayun literally translates as "beautiful garden' and is generally regarded as one of the most attractive temples in Bali. This temple situated near the village of Mengwi in the south of Bali. We spend about 45 minutes here taking photo and admiring the uniqueness of this temple before heading to Gitgit Twin Waterfall.

The journey to Gitgit waterfall is rather winding and long. It took us another hour before we reached there. It's the highest waterfall here in Bali. The view of the waterfall is simply stunning. Somehow this place reminds me of watching a forwarded email that killed a few people when there is a huge waterfall swept down. I did ask Wayan about this and he is unsure if this is the one. He does agree that there is such an accident but doesn’t sure which one as there is a few waterfall in Bali. Anyway, it is really a nice place for pure meditation and relaxing. Not much tourist can be seen around here as it's situated kinda far from Kuta or Legian. In fact Wayan told us that it's his first time here. He told us that his customer doesn’t request them to come here as it’s very far. We even shoot a video to trap kau him. He is really funny guy. Check this out here.

We then visited Danau Beratan, Danau Buyan and Danau Tamblingan. I would say nothing much for this twin lake. Wayan brought us to the best view so that we can see the twin lake from atop. We spend only 5 minute here before heading to Pura Ulundanu Beratan. It is a major water temple in Bali. The temple complex is located on the shores of Danau Bratan (Lake Bratan) in the mountains near Bedugul. We spend about 20 minutes here taking some photo.

We then stop by Candi Kuning Fruit Market to get some local fruits. We bought some corns and local’s kerepek. I had my lunch at Pacung Indah Restaurant. Initially we wanted to go Warung Sedap but Wayan doesn’t know the place. So he bought us to this restaurant. I ordered Sup Ayam with rice. I would say the food taste well and the panorama view from this restaurant here are quite good. I heard that the buffet sucks and not worth the penny. So please ask for ala carte instead. It’s a little tad expensive though.

We then headed back to Legian and on the way back; we stop by the roadside to get some Babi Guling which cost only Rp10k, Bakso for Rp3k and a whole watermelon for Rp8.5k. I would say it's rather cheap. Where on earth can you find a Bakso in Malaysia that cost only about Rm1+? We reached Tune hotel around 5.30pm and took a rest until 8.30pm. We headed to Legian beach; walk around before going to Cafe 66 to have a light supper. We call it a day around 11pm.

Bali - Day 1

2010-01-24T21:05:00.008+08:00

Day 1 (16/1/2010)

Currency: RM1.00 = Rp 2700

We landed Ngurah Rai, Bali International Airport around 12.45pm. There is no time different between Bali and Malaysia. We hired Wayan Suparta and his partner and arranged 2 full days tour for our day 2 and 3. We are greeted by Wayan Ditta and being transferred to Tune Hotel in Legian. First day is our free and easy day. We plan to go Nusa Dua, lunch in Bamboo Corner at Poppies Lane 2, Dreamland, GWK, Bluepoint, Uluwatu, dinner in Jimbaran Lia Cafe and night having some street walk in Legian. Wow, that is our big big ambitious plan still not knowing the difficulties in finding way! Lolz. We wanted to go so many places within short period and without knowing a single road. Wahaha.. Crazy, aren’t we? So here is what we manage to do.

We took out all the maps we have, study the places, maps and Google direction which I downloaded back in Malaysia. We rented a motorbike which cost us Rp50k. Do the calculation yourself. Our first destination is Bamboo Corner to have our lunch. It was already 3pm when we headed out. Of course we got lost, no in fact very very lost and we ask around for direction from pedestrian, security, petrol attendant and anyone we set our eyes on. Haha. By the time we know the road to Bamboo Corner, it was already too late. Looking at the time, it was already 4.30pm so we decided to cancel off Nusa Dua, Bluepoint and Dreamland as well. We headed straight to Uluwatu thinking to catch the beautiful sunset on the cliff. Mind you, it wasn't easy travelling to Uluwatu and it was only our first day there. Everything is so alienated to us. Along the way to Uluwatu, we passed by GWK & Dreamland and took some photo outside the entrance. It was already 5.30pm that time.

We finally managed to reach Pura Uluwatu at 5.45pm. We heard and read a lot of time that we need to be extra careful of the monkey presence in Uluwatu. They will try to snatch anything from spectacles to tripod. Despite knowing the fact that they were being trained by the local to grab everything from you and expected a 'reward' in return yet I am still a victim. Yes, I know it well but still fall for it. Damn! I am rather cautious and not wearing my spectacle most of the time. But I wanted to see a clearer view from the high cliff and carefully I took out my spectacle and wear it with one hand holding it. It was only a second that I was caught guard down without my hand holding the spectacle. It happens like split second when the monkey grabs away my spectacle from behind coming out from nowhere. I tried to grab it back but the monkey jump down to a shallow cliff. It only took about 20 seconds for the local to grab it back from the monkey. Impressively well trained! As a token of 'reward', I gave him Rp20k. Spoiled little of my mood as the spectacle has a little scratches on the lens and loose on the hook. Anyway, a good experience though. Luckily it didn't broke off otherwise I am not sure how the hell should I ride the motorbike all the way back to Legian. The distance from Legian to Uluwatu is about 30km not including lost way. I will say somewhere about 50km or more inclusive losses of way. Oh btw, there is no sunset view as it was cloudy at that time.

Not wanting the spectacle issue to spoil my mood, we headed off to Jimbaran Bay and easily found our way to Lia Cafe at 7pm by getting direction from a few locals. Lia Cafe was highly recommended by forumer as it was the cheapest and taste good. We ordered package A which cost us Rp180k which consist of 7 oyster, 7 prawns, 0.5kg squid and a big fish. I heard that some other places charge as high as triple the amount we paid! The view is superb and 100% satisfaction guaranteed. How we feel in love with Jimbaran Bay. It was very relaxing for us. We headed back to Tune Legian around 8.30pm and call it a day.

Wow, what a messy journey we had. We really can't imagine ourselves getting so lost. We were suppose to head to Nusa Dua but ended up heading the wrong way to Sanur. It was really fun and adventurous. Somehow we still managed to go to Uluwatu and Jimbaran. Mind you, it was only our first day in Bali. Lolz

Mum 53rd Birthday

2010-01-07T19:37:00.007+08:00

This year I am gonna cook for my mum birthday. I only cooked Chinese dishes before for them but not western. So I thought of cooking Cordon Bleu Chicken v1.1. It’s a little small improvement over the previous one that I cooked back in USJ.

I went to Tesco with my dad to get all the item needed for the cooking. Bread crumb, bake bean, spaghetti, chicken flat breast, and minced chicken and lot more. We had a hard time searching for bacon in Tesco and ended up looking in Giant. The promoter in Giant told us there is bacon selling in Tesco but it's at outer section. So we went back to Tesco yet again.

I started cooking around 4.45pm following the recipe like I do previously but this time having more accurate on the time. 4 minutes bottom seal and 3 minute top. The result is better as I get a more tender chicken meat. Bacon replacing previous chicken ham. I wouldn't want to go detail into cooking recipe and sorts. So here are the pics of the finished product.

Everyone seems to enjoy the dinner but I think dad like it the most. He's really into western dishes where meats rules. I wonder how he can finish two whole Cordon Bleu! I have a hard time finishing one as it's full of meat and meat and meat. After dinner we sang birthday song for mum and had ice cream cake as our dessert.

Daph Birthday celebration

2009-12-14T19:04:00.001+08:00

It was kinda rush when we reached our destination for her birthday celebration. To be exact, it was around 8.15pm and she was kinda surprise when I walk into J.W Marriott Hotel. Then I bloated out, Eh, dun dream ah, we just pass through here and not dinner here. Haha.

The place is at Jogoya, Starhill. This is my second time here. She was so surprise to see lots and loads of food spread everywhere ranging from Japanese, Western, Chinese and much more. I think at that moment she was like Luffy seeing all the foods with shinning eyes saying 'Suuu Kehhhh'. Haha

We ate mostly Sashimi as we are more into Japanese food. I thought to book Tenji at first but since Daph haven’t been here before; I thought to bring her here first so we can compare the quality of the food next time in Tenji. Apparently Jogoya standard has drop a little. It's not as good as the last I visited. That was in year 2007 if I am not mistaken.

The best in Jogoya must be the free flow Haagen Dazs ice cream spread. On that night, we tasted 12 scoops of different flavor. I tried as much as possible as it costly to taste it in this way outside. One scoop easily cost more than Rm10+. So no choice la. Have to taste all the sample mah. Me and Daph tasted Belgian Chocolate, Green Tea, Cheery Vanilla, Chocolate Chips, Vanilla, Rum N Raisin, Coffee, Strawberry Cheese, Passion Fruits, Blueberry, Macadamia Nut....and hmmm one more I forgotten! There are actually 14 flavors available at Jogoya but we only managed to eat 12 scoops before we completely given up. We left out Lime and Chocolate. I love their Belgian Choco very much.

Then we take a stroll outside Pavilion before going back home. What is birthday without birthday gift to end the day? Another surprise when she received the gift. It was an external LG slim DVD Rom. She earlier mentions that it’s kinda hard without a DVD Rom as sometime she like to watch DVD movie. Now the Acer was perfectly combination with ext DVD and protector. Hmm, still thinking to upgrade to 4GB DDR2 ram but need to wait for the ram price to drop.

Well, this is how I celebrated birthday with her. The main gift is actually us going to Bali on the 16th of January 2010. I can hardly wait for the day to come. It’s about a month to go.

Window 7 Home Premium Review

2009-11-20T19:30:00.002+08:00

I have been using Vista Home Premium about 3 years and found out it's actually not as bad as being said by many users. Most of the complaint is slow boot time, resource hog, annoying UAC, incompatible driver, 'Sleep' issue just to name a few. Here is my 2 cents view. Vista is actually not that bad. I like Vista more than XP a lot in term of features and appearance. Yes, I do admit that Vista really a resource hogger but installing 2GB DDR2 will help. Hey, what you expect when you want all those muchy niche aero view and dreamscene on your desktop but at the same time complaining Vista is a resource hogger? Best appearance VS best performance, you decide. I dun have any issue on slow boot time as I close almost every startup programmed except the essential one. Some users having problem with 'sleep' mode but it doesn't affect me. Maybe I am the lucky one.

So what's the main different by switching from Vista to Win 7? One word, simplified. Microsoft irons out the entire problem in Vista and gives you a turbo charged version of Vista which renames it to Window 7. No more resource hog, fast boot time and simplicity. It's like a lite version of Vista.

The best changes for me will be wireless connectivity. It's so easy and effortless to connect to a wireless network in Window 7. This is what I called simplified. Nice! Next on my list will be Jump List. I wouldn’t wan to go further explaining its feature but you can Google for it.

Then there is this Aero Peek features. Once you're using it, the main change is a new fade out feature, which highlights the window you're hovering over by fading out all other active windows on the desktop. So not only do you get a window preview in the "peek" window, but you also get a full on preview of the window as it looks on your monitor. On top of it, Superbar is great too. There is improved thumbnail preview, show desktop and you can easily identified open and running process in the Superbar. Window do have sidebar gadget but this time, you can place the sidebar application anywhere you want it to be in the desktop. The ram usage is low too while boot time is a little bit faster than my ex Vista.

There is still so much to learn in Window 7. I am still not familiar with the libraries features but it seems that one can connect an ext hdd and somehow when you took out the ext hdd, there will be a virtual folder which is accessible from there? Not sure not sure. Then there is also Group Home which when you put a network access on Home, the rest of PC with Win 7 with Home network will simply connected and share all the printers and connected device with each others. Easy, simple and very convenience. No setting needed. It benefits home or office with many pc. Again, it’s effortless.

There are still many unknown and more time needed to explore Window 7. I would say Window 7 really trim down unnecessary steps in Vista and make this OS a more user friendly and simple but without sacrificing the features. Neat!

When I upgraded Vista to Window 7 the other day night, it’s a nightmare as it got stuck at ‘Gathering Files, Setting and Programs (18%)’. I tried canceling and installing again and it failed me 3 times. It took me 10pm to 6am failing to install. I googled for answer and apply many solution but still failed miserably too. At last, I did a clean installation rather than an upgrade. It took about one day for me to completely installed, updated, reinstalled other programs, driver, transferring data, pictures, setting etc. A piece of advice to anyone who wanted to upgrade, please do a clean installation. Upgrade you will not be losing any programs in Vista, but it’s a real mess as Window 7 need to take care all registry setting, files and directories, permission, ownership etc. Not to mention currently installed software and libraries that expand from time to time that may cause your system files cluttered. That is why it has higher chances to FAIL.

Why do I get free Window 7 Home Premium?

2009-11-19T23:01:00.006+08:00

Customers who purchase a qualifying Windows Vista®-based PC from June 26, 2009 to January 31, 2010 can get an upgrade to Windows® 7 when Windows® 7 becomes available.

This is being advertised in most of the major computer outlet for Window 7 free upgrade kit when you purchase any pc that come preinstalled with Window. Those who purchase their pc from 26th June will get free upgrade for selected model with preinstalled Vista Home Premium and above. I was so disappointed as I bought my new notebook on 21st June, 5 days too early otherwise I would be eligible for a free upgrade from Vista to Window 7. The price for Window 7 Home Premium currently priced at RM370-RM390. Expensive!

I remember when Vista launched in year 2007 and I bought it around that price too. It's hard to get a pirated copy back then as it’s still new and ‘uncrackable’. I couldn't stand the temptation and bought it. Here is my 2007 blog . (Dillema!! To buy or not to buy!). Fast forward to present, I wouldn’t have do so as it's too expensive for just an OS. Furthermore, there is so much pirated cd easily available on the shelf and not to mention download. But I always believe that using a genuine copy of OS is a must as we will get updates without worrying on anything. Yes, pirated can be updated but there will be a day when Microsoft detected it was non genuine and reduce the function of the OS. I agreed that by then, hacker team will do the job again and this cycle never ends.

I was in LYN forum and looking at comment drop by fellow forumer about the free upgrade programmed. They are excitingly waiting for their copy and there I am only able to drool. So I thought to myself why not try my luck to order the free upgrade. It's just 5 days early. So I place the order at Acer website keying in my notebook serial number and date of purchase. I changed it to 28th June 2009 hopefully able to get it. I didn't place much hope on this as I knew they will surely ask for Proof of Purchase (POP). I couldn’t care less until I received an email saying that my credit card has been charged. Yes, there is shipping and handling fees of USD18.76 which equivalent to RM60+. I was excited to see this because only those who passed and eligible will be charged. Furthermore there is an order number given to me. From that days onward, I checked the status in the given website for almost everyday. I heard that the ETA will be approximately 2 months!

Two COA on my notebook (VHP and 7HP)!

On the 11th days from the email, I was given shipping detail and a tracking number stating that the delivery will take 6-8 days. I check with POS website and found that it will be deliver on 16th November which means in 3 days time. So on Monday I waited for the postman to come but he didn't turn up. When I checked the status again on the next day, it said the item have been delivered yesterday at 5.20pm. I was shocked and called up POS immediately. She told me that the item has been sent out and I should have received it yesterday. Finally she gave me a report number and will pass to investigation dept to further investigate.

I received the Acer Upgrade kit around 12pm on that day itself. When my guard checked with the postman, he said that he was on leave yesterday, so no delivery for the whole Shah Alam. Apparently, the call center doesn’t know about that. Great job POS Malaysia!

Stay tune as I will blog for installation, upgrading and review for Window 7 Home Premium soon.

3 Steps Meguiar Polish + Wax

2009-11-16T00:15:00.010+08:00

I made an online booking with Posh Car Care Auto Detailer on last Sunday to polish my car. One and a half year has pass since my last polish. That time I was still new to car detailing. I remember I went to Autoglym Indian shop to get my car polish. That time I am quite unsatisfied with their end result.

It cost RM180 for a lousy Indian shop to polish my car during that time. Hack, the worst is they even use bath tub cleaner to clean my interior dashboard. It's was damn glossy and not to mention super oily.

More info of lousy Autoglym shop at here

Wash and Claying

Fast forward to this year, I went to Meguiar’s 3 Step Polishing which consists of washing, claying, polishing and wax. All this was done by using Meguiar product. I also did a cushion and interior cleaning too. Total cost me RM248.

Polishing

I am very satisfied with the end result. My car colour was dull but now it’s back shiny and he car appear to look brighter. The only thing that can’t be done is my engine bonnet. According to the guy, he said that the there is no more coating layer thus impossible to bring back the shine. He is right as the bonnet have been repainted by a lousy paint. Maybe I might respray back the front bonnet later.

Wax

It took more than 4 hours to polish my car. The name of the shop is Posh Car Care and located at USJ 19 nearby Digital Mall. Here is their website: Posh Car Care. The staffs are friendly too. They did their best to do the best for me. For this, I gave thumbs up for their effort.

Acer Aspire 1810T Timeline

2009-11-11T23:57:00.009+08:00

I seriously love this Acer 1810T notebook. It looks simply amazing. I was scouting for Daph desktop replacement before we decided to get a netbook. But then Daph upgraded her budget as netbook isn’t that good and decided to get Acer 1410T instead. It's running on SU2700, 250GB Hdd, 1GB DDR2 and freedos. There are only two colours which is blue and red. Both colours look dull and boring. Anyway, since there is not much option, we decided to get it on this coming Saturday.

It's lucky enough that then Acer 1810T was launch and just only started available yesterday. So I call up my friend who is working in Imbi and quickly place a booking for this Timeline. The price is about RM400 higher and we get a double speed processor of SU4100, 320GB Hdd, 2GB DDR2 and genuine Window 7 Home Premium! An additional of Rm400 for all that mention is a steal! Mind you that a genuine Win 7 HP OEM alone will have already cost RM365 the cheapest. Nuff said!

Its very light and the screen are 11.6" with 1366x768 resolutions. The metal hood look very nice and the word Acer and Olympic logo were crafted into the notebook hood. Nicely done and I have to give Acer thumbs up for this. Another thing I really like bout this notebook is it came with Multi Gesture touchpad which I find really nice and useful. Of course a mouse is still the best but when there is none available on hand, this multi gesture touchpad work brilliantly.

I played around with Window 7 HP and found it quite similar to Vista. The biggest different is it really boot and shut down faster than Vista HP. The interface looks more neat and simplified. There is some slight improvement overall which make thing simpler. People actually said that Window 7 is like a turbocharged version of Vista. Haha. Love it! Btw, I am still waiting for my free upgrade kit for Win 7 HP which I have placed an order to Acer. Anyone who bought their notebook on 26th June onwards on selected model and VHP above will get a free upgrade kit to Window 7.I read on a forum saying that eta is around 2 months. Just keep my finger cross.

Overall Daph seems really satisfied with her notebook. I am sure she is still awake by now testing his new toy.

Hotel 81 Rosegarden & The Skewed Tobacco Pouch Street, Beijing 2009 - Day 6

2009-11-08T12:42:00.000+08:00

Day 6 is purely for leisure and relaxes without any plan. We really need a day to wind out from our exhausted day 1-5. We woke up at 10am today and check out from Dong Si Fu Yuan. We had our breakfast nearby before taking train just up a station to Beixinqiao.

It took us sometime before we could locate Hotel 81. It's off road from the Ghost Street. We were so excited when we entered into Hotel 81. It's one of a kind. A traditional Chinese courtyard style hotel! It's pretty expensive at CNY580 though.

There is a plasma TV hanging on the wall, the toilet crafting are so beautiful, the atmosphere is peace and relax, top with the wonderful cold weather. It's just a perfect and wonderful place for us to fully relax ourselves. I was imagining myself if there is any chances to see a Kungfu man come flying in at night and fight at the courtyard. Lol I guess too much of watching those movie I. Anyway, check it out the pic!

Of course we wouldn't want to waste one whole single day just to relax in the hotel. So at night we went to The Skewed Tobacco Pouch Street. It is one of the most famous hutongs in Beijing. There are many different kinds of bars, tea houses, coffee house and souvenir shops mushroomed on the street. The street is ablaze with lights, giving a homely atmosphere as we stroll around. The only thing which we can't stand is the cold and windy weather.

Then we had our dinner nearby that street. I have being told that Beijing is also famous for 'Water Cook Fish'. We jokingly said it as 'Who Cook Fish' as the word 'sui' is rather similar for water and who. The fish is soaking in chili oil with lots of peppercorns and beansprout. It tastes good at first but it turnout very 'geli' after a few times of eating. It's not very spicy but somehow it will turn your tongue numb. We also ordered fried cabbage too.

We then went strolling at Beijing famous eating street, Ghost Street aka Guijie. There are red lanterns, traditional courtyards and hundreds of restaurants along the street.

We walk back to our Hotel 81 and took some night scene picture. Then, we started to pack our thing into luggage. We are going off to Tianjin and saying goodbye to memorable Beijing tomorrow morning.

Temple of Heaven & Liulichang Culture Street, Beijing 2009 - Day 5

2009-11-02T22:40:00.002+08:00

The Temple of Heaven was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1998 and was described as a masterpiece of architecture and landscape design which simply and graphically illustrates a cosmogony of great importance for the evolution of one of the world’s great civilizations.

We arrived there around 10.30am and were amazed to see a lot of Beijing senior citizen doing several of activities in Temple of Heaven. There is people singing, dancing, gambling, writing, playing traditional game, opera and many more. It was all being done in a group and every activity will have their own little fans. Some are in large group while some are small. It's really unbelievable to see all this senior citizen joining and grouping together to do various activities. I am sure it's a real heaven for the retiree. This activities stretch from North gate and along Long Corridor.

We spend more than 5 hours here visiting POI such as Double Ring Pavilion, Imperial Vault of Heaven, Divine Music Administration, Hall of Prayers for Good Harvest and others. One thing to be noted in Beijing are almost all the attraction we visited are super huge and need no less than 5 hours worth of visiting. You really need to have a 'good pair of leg' to walk around Beijing main attraction such as I mention in my previous blog in Beijing. Nuff said and let the picture rolling.

Then we visited Liulichang Culture Street aka Liulichang Hutong. Hutong means narrow streets or alleys. Since the mid-20th century, the number of Beijing hutongs has dropped dramatically as they are demolished to make way for new roads and buildings. Liulichang treasure house of precious calligraphy, paintings and duplicates of Chinese ancient books. Being endowed with so many Chinese ancient treasures, Beijing Liulichang Culture Street really deserves a visit to experience the Hutong culture in Beijing.

According to a Chinese saying, no visit to Beijing is complete if you miss seeing the Great Wall or dining on Beijing Roast Duck as a famous and delicious food with very long history. Of course we wouldn't give any changes of missing the best so we had our dinner at Quan Ju De He Ping Men Roast Duck Restaurant.

Quanjude Roast Duck Restaurant is one of the best restaurants serving Beijing Roast Duck. It has a history of nearly 150 years, and today there are many chain restaurants of it around the city. The dish is prized for the thin, crispy skin, with authentic versions of the dish serving mostly the skin and little meat, sliced in front of the diners by the cook. The meat is often eaten with pancakes, spring onions, and hoisin sauce or sweet noodle sauce. The taste is simply heaven like. We ordered half roast duck, chinese herbal mushroom soup (which ended up as one of the best soup I ever had for my entire life), duck meat fried rice and tofu with egg. We really enjoyed ourselves throughout the dinner. The bill is a lil expensive though at CNY375 but trust me, it worth every single cent for this heavenly 'peking' duck and the superlicious soup and you wouldn’t want to miss it! Enough of talking and let your saliva start drooling. Haha

After the scrumptious dinner, we went back to our Dong Si Fu Yuan hotel at around 9.15pm and started to pack our luggage. Tonight will be the last night we are staying here. Tomorrow, we are going to rest and stay at one of the most beautiful and unique courtyard hotel… at least for me.

Summer Palace & Beijing National Stadium, Beijing 2009 - Day 4

2009-10-28T21:55:00.000+08:00

It took us about an hour from subway Dongsi to Xiyuan station. It's quite a long journey from our hotel and we need to walk and transit subway line a few times too. Upon arriving at Xiyuan station, we still need to walk about 10 minutes before reaching Summer Palace.

Having the largest royal park and being well preserved, it was designated, in 1960 by the State Council, as a Key Cultural Relics Protection Site of China. Containing examples of the ancient arts, it also has graceful landscapes and magnificent constructions. The Summer Palace is the archetypal Chinese garden, and is ranked amongst the most noted and classical gardens of the world. In 1998, it was listed as one of the World Heritage Sites by UNESCO.

Summer Palace is really a huge garden and we only managed to cover about 60% or less. After spending more than 6 hours here, there is still so many red LED dot on our electronic map. Seriously, this place is damn huge!

We love Suzhou Street really much. The scenery here is kind of peaceful and beautiful with shops along the riverside. By looking at the charm of Suzhou Street in Summer Palace, it gave me a sudden urge to visit Suzhou in future asap. We had our lunch here while simply enjoying Suzhou Street scenery.

I have really nothing much to talk about Summer Palace so let’s roll up some picture here and hope you enjoyed it.

Here is some picture we took during sunset at Summer Palace. I don't think so that one could finish walking with all the POI covered. Yes, maybe you could do that but it will be like amazing race (quickie) kinda thing. A famous travelling website said that Summer Palace recommended time of visit is about one and a half hour. He must be real kidding!

Our next destination is Beijing National Stadium and we took subway to Tiananmen West station. According to my research of direction in Google map, it shows that the national stadium located somewhere near to Tiananmen West station. Daphne was smart enough to ask the station staff before exiting the station. The staffs look at us and reconfirmed the place we wanted to go and she said it's impossible to walk from this station. Then I only I know that Google map gave me the wrong direction! Check the printscreen below! The national stadium is the one I circle up and not the B destination. We quickly make our way there by going back to the train and did some interchange after getting the direction from the staff. Our leg is already suffering and begging for mercy and yet we still managed to crawl there.

Bird Nest Stadium structure are truly amazing and Daph straight away knew that this stadium is very hard to construct. She works in a construction firm so she knew particularly well on building structure and material. The design, which originated from the study of Chinese ceramics, implemented steel beams in order to hide supports for the retractable roof; giving the stadium the appearance of a "Bird's nest". The retractable roof was later removed from the design after inspiring the stadium's most recognizable aspect. Due to the stadium's outward appearance, it was nicknamed "The Bird's Nest"

Beijing Nationals Aquatics Centre in the other hand is simply marvellous too. The outer wall is based on a structure devised from the natural formation of bubbles in soap foam. Many people believe Water Cube to be the fastest Olympic pool in the world. The proof? The Aquatics Centre saw 25 world records broken during Beijing 2008 Olympics. It is 1 meter deeper than most Olympic pools. Up to a certain limit, beyond which swimmers will lose their sense of vision, deeper pools allow the waves to dissipate down to the bottom, leading to less water disturbance to the swimmers.

We spend about one hour and a half here despite our leg not listening to us anymore. We really tortured our poor leg in these 4 days. We went back to our hotel and call it a day.

Badaling Great Wall & Ming Tomb (Dingling), Beijing 2009 - Day 3

2009-10-27T19:30:00.000+08:00

We woke up earlier today at 7.30am as we wanted to conquer the Great Wall of China. When we came out from the hotel street, we are happy to see that there is a busy local wet market in the morning. This is a good time to snap a few photo of the locality of Beijing daily life. We spend about 20 minutes here despite we are in hurry to go Badaling Great Wall as it's about 70km from our hotel.

We took subway to Jisuitan station and walk to Deshengmen and from there we met a conman that wanted to cut our throat. We knew about tricks of 919 buses to Badaling beforehand and we are extra cautious on this. There will be a lot of 919 buses and all will be going to the direction of Badaling Great Wall. It’s just that the routes are different from each other and some might end up going a big round before reaching destination. The problem is we need to find the exact express direct way to Badaling.

Despite knowing the facts that there are many conman trying to squeeze our money out of pocket, we nearly fall into their trap. This 'bus guy' we met was asking for CNY400 for transportation and keeps asking us to take cab. He said that it's hard to wait for 50 people for the bus as it will wait for passengers to fully board the bus before departure. Then he told us only his bus are going to Badaling and if we buy one way ticket, we wouldn’t be able to come back to Deshengmen. We keep on asking him how he calculates the total CNY400 amount as we knew the original bus only cost CNY12 and he keep on pushing my question away. Finally he told us that amount included ticket for cable car and ‘others’ as he knew we are reluctant and our suspicious grew stronger on him. I told him off saying that the cable car only cost RMB60 and he argued back saying that there is no such cheap price. We walk off and let him grumbling behind. Within a few steps ahead; we finally found the real direct 919 bus to Badaling. It cost only CNY12 per person compare to CNY400! The location of this direct 919 bus is a little hidden behind Deshengmen tower. We reached Badaling in an hour and bought entrance ticket which cost CNY 60 per person and sliding car ticket for CNY 60 too.

I must admit that Badaling Great Wall was truly a wonder of the medieval world. We took a slide car to the 4th station which we need to climb another 3 station before reaching the top of Badaling Great Wall. For the adventurous, you can climb from station 1 and it's said to take about 6 hours as the steps are steep and there is only one way up and down. Sometime you need to wait for an hour’s for people to descend only you can start ascending as it's very narrow. For people who couldn't climb but wanted to enjoy the top could opt for cable car instead and it will bring you to the 6th station. We wanted half half experience so we took the sliding car. We climb for an hour before reaching the top. Alas we conquered Badaling Great Wall and the feeling is so great!

The scenery on top really took our breath away and we really enjoyed the nice cool windy weather. We are lucky to have visited Badaling Great wall and other part of Beijing on October. If we were to go during July which is their summer, I am sure the mood will be completely different. People who are exhausted, hot and tired are easier to get angry. We are tired but the cold weather really helps a lot in controlling our mood. We took a lot of picture here and as usual, let the picture do the talking.

We then hired a private car to bring us to Ming Tomb - Dingling. We wanted to go Changling and Dingling but the driver misunderstood us for other place. We ended up in The Ming Dynasty Wax Museum. We quickly spend a few minutes here and buzz off to Dingling as the time is running out.

We then arrive at Dingling Tomb at 4.30pm and paid our private car and he goes off. We quickly bought the ticket as the Dingling will close at 6.00pm. Dingling is under ground and about 27 meters deep. It is the mausoleum of Emperor Zhu Yijun, the thirteenth emperor who occupied the throne the longest during the Ming Dynasty, and his two empresses. The main features are the Stone Bridge, Soul Tower, Baocheng and the Underground Place, which was unearthed between 1956 and 1958. The entire palace is made of stone. The Soul Tower is symbolic of the whole of Dingling and it forms the entrance to the underground chambers.

When I came back to Malaysia and done some reading, I get to know that the excavation of Dingling tomb was rather disastrous as they didn't have the technology or the resource to preserve the excavated artefacts. Large amount of silk and other textiles were simply piled into a storage room that leaked water and wind. As a result, most of the surviving artefacts today have severely deteriorated, and replicas are instead displayed in the museum. The lesson learned from the Ding Ling excavation has led to a new policy of the China government not to excavate any historical site except for rescue purposes. In particular, no proposal to open an imperial tomb has been approved since Dingling, even when the entrance has been accidentally revealed.

We nearly left stranded over 90km from our hotel as we have forgotten the time and thought the last bus depart at 5pm. We are lucky as the last bus for 5pm was actually from Badaling but not at Ming Tomb. When we came out from Ming Tomb, there is only two private cars left on the parking lot. We are so scared at that time and luckily a bus came just in time. We boarded the bus and it took us an hour to the last station. From there, we have to take another bus to Deshengmen which took us another hour. We reached home nearly 9pm and we had maggie noodles and some grilled meat which we bought on our way to hotel as our dinner.

We are so exhausted by the time we finished our dinner and bath. Our leg seems not listening to us anymore and they beg for a rest. We use Yoko Yoko as counter pain for our leg. We called it a day and have a good sleep.

Forbidden City, Tiananmen & Wanfujing, Beijing 2009 - Day 2

2009-10-26T19:11:00.002+08:00

We woke up at 8am today and had our breakfast in the hotel around 8.30am. Dong Si Fu Yuan breakfast sucks to the max. Nuff said. Our destination for today is Forbidden City, Tiananmen and Wanfujing Street Snack. I planned visiting Tiananmen at night as many forumers said that Tiananmen has a nice night scenery. We then took Beijing subway and reached Tiananmen around 10.30am.

What I didn’t know is Tiananmen is actually a huge square that is connected to Forbidden City. I thought they are separated afar by each others. On our way into the Forbidden City, we came across persimmon trees. This is my first time looking at persimmon tree and it bears a lots of persimmon fruits on each of every tree! Ticket for Forbidden City cost CNY60 per person and we managed to get it after 10 minutes queuing. We also rented the automatic tour guide aka electronic map which run on sensor. The red LED shows point of interest (POI) and when you have arrived to that particular POI, the LED light will goes off indicating 'visited' places and automatically begin talking about the history. Deposit CNY100 for each unit and CNY40 for English while CNY10 for Chinese language.

The Forbidden City was the Chinese imperial palace from the Ming Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty. For almost five centuries, it served as the home of the Emperor and his household, as well as the ceremonial and political centre of Chinese government. The construction of Forbidden City took a total of 14 years involving millions of workers and hundred thousand of artisans. It was the order of Hongwu Emperor in Ming dynasty to start this massive construction during 1406.

I am amused and fascinated at the structure of the building in Forbidden City. Just imagine that you are walking in an emperor's palace which is the most powerful man in China during the era of 1400-1500 something. During that time if you are a normal person, dun even think to steps into this powerful palace. If you offended the emperor, be prepare to be beheaded and not only you but your whole family! I was so interested in this Forbidden City history that when I came back to Malaysia, I read the whole summary of this piece of history as I wanted to know why there is no more emperor’s generation anymore in China. I found out that the last emperor was Pu Yi with the history "From emperor to normal citizen" which is quite interesting, Nanking massacre, protest at Tiananmen in 1989 and others. I wonder why I have more interest in knowing a part of China history rather than our own Malaysia history. Well, I wouldn't want to bore you any further with words describing Forbidden City and Tiananmen but I will just let the pictures do the talking instead.

We spend a total of 8 hours from 10.30am to 6.30pm in Forbidden City and Tiananmen and we had a wonderful sightseeing here. I enjoyed the sunset in Forbidden City too and we ate biscuit and hot dog as our lunch. The time sure past very fast here. The only cons is our leg is killing us with all the walking we done here.

We then took the subway to Wangfujing station for street snack attack for our dinner. I must admit that Donghuamen food is better than Wangfujing. We ate tan tan noodles by the street while watching opera show on the second floor of the building. Then we continue walking down the street eating those snacks we ate at Donghuamen. Then we took subway to Dongsi station and walk back to our hotel. Both of us soak our feet into hot water as our leg is so painful. We called it a day around 11pm.

Oh, by the way the temperature in Beijing during day time is somewhere between 15C-18C while at night about 10C-13C. A lot people said that during October is the best time to visit china as it's not so cold and hot. For us Malaysian, it can consider pretty cold. Haha

Bali, ayam kambing soon..

2009-10-21T19:28:00.004+08:00

Yup, you heard me right. Bali, I am coming soon.

We will be flying to Bali on the 16th January 2010. Well, just say that I get quite a superb bargain on the Air Asia air ticket and Tune hotel in Legian. All I could say is the flight and accommodation that I booked cost below Rm500 for 5D4N stay. That sums up to be only Rm250 per person! What's more, the departure time is 9am and reaches there by 12pm. And going back time will be 1.55pm which is extremely great time too. The wonders of this Tune hotel are for RM155 I could stay there for 4 nights. Now how cool is that. A mere RM38.75 a night! You better believe it! I have stayed in Tune hotel in Penang before and all I could say is superb!

Anyway, of course there is a catch on this super mambo promotion by Air Asia. It's a rainy season during Jan - Feb in Bali. Heck with the price of peanut, I couldn't care more. We will just embrace Bali with raining coat if necessary.

I actually wanted to book on Dec but then it was too expensive during school break and year end holiday. Upon searching the website, the flight to Bali itself already cost RM704 cheapest. Then, the departure time is something like 4pm and you reached there 7pm night. One day gone. Returning time sucks too at 6.05am! It will be as it like 4D3N if you get what I mean. The better air ticket will cost no less than RM900 and above. Not to mention that the hotel is expensive too.

I have started to do some light survey on the places of interest in Bali, currency, food, bike rental, conman artist, map and others. There is a lot more to edit in my Bali draft. Anyway, it's still early for any preparation yet. Gosh, I can wait for another exciting trip!

Donghuamen Night Market, Beijing 2009 - Day 1

2009-10-20T19:32:00.003+08:00

Currency: RM1.00 = CNY 2.02

We reached LCCT around 12.15am as our flight is 3.00am. Why so early? Well, this is to avoid additional 50% surcharge for the limo taxi that brought us to LCCT. We call the airport taxi to pick us up at 11.30pm. We had our supper at Old Town in LCCT and boarded the plane at 2.45am. It was a long 6 hours journey to Tianjin, China. The Air Asia X is equipped with in flight entertainment LCD but you need to pay to enjoy these facilities. Anyway, for in flight info such as GPS etc is FOC. We slept throughout the journey.

We touched down Tianjin at 9.05am and took a bus to Tianjin Railway Station. We bought the bullet train ticket from Tianjin to Beijing and boarded the train at 11.40am. The bullet train cost CNY57 per ticket. The speed of the train is amazing according to Daph. I felt asleep in the train. The top speed is 324kmph as written in the screen! We reached Beijing in no time.

Our hotel is Dong Si Fu Yuan hotel where it's located at Long Fu Si Street in Dongcheng district. We took their subway and headed to the nearest station which is Dongsi station. We checked in the hotel and were a little disappointed with the room as it look a little old and wear out. The price per night is CNY180. It seems to get good feedback from the trip advisor though. First, the breakfast seems always finishing anytime from 7.30-9.00am. Mostly only vegetable and hard bun etc. Then, they never clean the cup in our room, never sweep floor etc. They only change the towel and tea packet. The last day we stayed, the water heater spoiled. They even nearly walk into our room at 6.30am in one of a morning and luckily we put the door chain lock. Then they apologize as they thought nobody is in the room. There is no kettle but they only thermo. They fill the thermo everyday in the morning and expect the water to be hot until night. What’s more, you pour the water out and there is water dripping on the other end of the thermo! I think I can go on many things but I will put a full stop here. We stayed here 5 days as we have not much time to look for other hotel. The only thing I like is the location of this hotel. There seems to be a good hotel a few steps from Dong Si Fu Yuan but it was fully book until next month according to the hotel receptionist.

We headed to Temple of Heaven but it's already closed by the time we reached there. So we decided to move it to other days of our self make itinerary. Btw, by 5.45pm the sky is already dark and by 6pm it's like 7.30pm here in Malaysia. This is due to autumn season. The weather is cold throughout the day especially at night.

We went to Donghuamen Food Street and taste a very new food/snack in China. We tasted a few foods here. It cost about an average of CNY10 per food here. Among the nice food we tasted here is 'satay look alike' lamb, stuffed pork ball, unagi stick, fried noodles and sugar coated fruits.

Now the bad one we tasted is pineapple sweet glutinous rice, fried milk, corn (their corn is very different from ours), goubuli, chien ping and the worst among the worst is exotic food, starfish. Just for being ‘been there, done that’ kinda thing. Hey at least I have eaten a starfish. It cost us CNY20 for the fried starfish. You could only eat the inside part as the skin or shell is too hard to be eaten. China people really can eat anything. There is a lot of exotic food such as live baby scorpion, worm, dog meat, just to name a few.

We walked back to our hotel which is about 4-5km plus lost and wrong direction from Donghuamen and Wangfujing. It's only day 1 and our leg is almost broken. Haha. Seriously, we walked a lot today from Tianjin to Beijing with our heavy big luggage and not to mention a lot of wrong way and direction when going to Dong Si Fu Yuan hotel. We called it a day around 11pm as we need to wake up early tomorrow for a full day plan ahead.

China, Ayam Kambing!!!

2009-10-10T12:33:00.007+08:00

I am now in JJ Kepong and I am so excited that by tomorrow 9.00am, we will be landed in Tianjin, China. Our flight supposes to depart at 1am but it is delayed to 3am.. I have called up airport limo to pick us up at 11.30pm tonight. Gosh, I can't wait to fly and yet I haven't even pack my luggage lulz.

Basically, I will be covering mostly in Beijing and only a little in Tianjin. Research has been done intensively and I hope all our journey goes smoothly. I have also done mapping to each of the place we are going and it's as detail as "Head west on 东四西大街/東四西大街 toward 连丰胡同/連豐胡同 for 0.3km" Thanks to Google map, I am able to get a very detail direction. Not to forget getting as much info as I can on Beijing various scam/conmen trick. The most famous one should be Tea Ceremony, Medicine, Art student, Black Taxi and other minor scam.

Day 1 - Temple of Heaven - Donghuamen Night Market
Day 2 - Forbidden City - Behai - Tiananmen - Wanfujing
Day 3 - Badaling Great Wall - Ming Tomb
Day 4 - Summer Palace - Bird Nest Stadium
Day 5 - Hutong Liulichang - Guang'anmen Food Street - Hutong Zhuanta
Day 6 - Courtyard Hotel 81 Rosegarden (F&E) - The Skewed Tobacco Pouch Street
Day 7 - Tianjin Ancient Cultural Street

Any additional place will be added in if there is any free time during our visit. I am sure important places like Tiananmen is well decorated as they had just finish celebrating China 60 years Independence Day. Well China, AYAM KAMBING!! (I am coming)

Wedding Night Dinner

2009-10-05T21:26:00.011+08:00

We woke up early at around 7am today (27/09/2009) to load cooking utensil, cooking material and others for tonight wedding dinner into a rented lorry. All this 'ka zhang' is for Daph mum's cooking at Thean Hou temple for his son wedding dinner tonight. The reason they did it themselves as they believe that their own cooking benefit from giving guests the best of the best cooking ingredients. They wanted all their friends and relatives to have the best of the best with her generous cooking. I must admit that she is really a tough mama to handle all this by herself. Of course she does hire 7 aunties to do the washing and cleaning job and 10 youth as waiters.

We continued sleeping after loading the utensil while Daph parents and his bro go to Thean Hou temple for preparation. We only went there around 12pm to decorate Thean Hou temple's staging. It took about 2 hours for us to decorate the staging with the help of Daph dad and bro.

I took a bath in Then Hou temple toilet at around 5.15pm as I am the last one doing the staging balloon decoration. Daph had to bath earlier as her friend will make up for her around 4pm. Daph bro, Weng need to go back to fetch worker for tonight wedding and need to go off earlier too. Everyone is busy with their own task but I can ensure you that the busiest person is Daph mum. She needs to cook for 62 tables and she started to do preparation and cooking at 10am! Even when the dinner is ongoing she frequently needs to go into the kitchen to ensure everything goes fine and at it best.

Around 7pm, some of the guests have already arrived and there are a little hiccups during placement of table for guests. Sometime, there will be a long queue of guests waiting to be seated due to some error in finding the guests name VS number of table to be seated. We should have bring our notebook and thing will get easier using excel to quickly sort out name and table. Anyway, with the help of her cousin and relatives, we manage to iron out the problem and the arrangement goes smoothly. We waited for the guests to arrive until near 8.30pm before the wedding dinner start. Some of the guests already complaint and grumbling that it's very late start. What to do, there is still about 15%-20% late comer on that time. (I should have issue show cause letter for each of them for late coming like what I did in my company. Hehe). KL people will always be late for wedding dinner!

The dinner goes well and we certainly are satisfied with our staging, food and our course happy for our newlywed couple. Everyone looks happy indeed. The dinner ended around 10.30pm and this time we need to wait for the workers to finish clearing up the hall and kitchen. I then sent a few aunties and a guy back to their home in Jinjang and reached Kepong around 1.30am.

At Daph home, we have a post mortem on the wedding dinner with Daph parent and brother. We talk and chat until 2.30am before calling it a day. Everyone is so tired by then but with a big satisfaction smile planted on each of everyone face. It's like someone pat on your shoulder and said Good Job!

Wedding Ceremony

2009-10-01T23:57:00.010+08:00

I woke up early today as it’s Daph bro, Guan wedding day with Cindy. I am his brother groomsman on last Saturday 26/9/2009. I reached Kepong around 7.50am and ate breakfast at his house. We waited for other groomsman to arrive before we headed to Puchong to 'fetch' his bride back.

It's game time for his bridesmaids once we reached her apartment in Puchong. All the groomsman is ready to battle and we are power enough to go through many of bridesmaids challenge with ease. There is tong yuan stuff with god know what is it inside, find certain year of coin in cold ice bucket, and break the ice to take the bride room key, recognise bride lips in a paper and much more. Alas, the groom gets her bride with the help of groomsman and off we ‘fetch’ his bride back to Kepong for wedding tea ceremony. Chinese Wedding Tea ceremony is performed during a Chinese wedding. Tea is used in Chinese wedding ceremonies mainly because tea is Chinese national drink and it symbolizes respect. I would say the tea ceremony is probably one of the most important parts in Chinese Weddings.

After lunch the tea ceremony is being performed and mostly all of the relative and family will drink the tea and give red packets or jewelleries. Some relatives prefer the bride and groom to wear the jewellery gifts immediately and will even put it on for them. With generous relatives, you may look like a Christmas tree after the tea ceremony. Unmarried elder siblings will not present the couple with gifts after drinking the tea instead the bride and groom will present gifts to the younger siblings and cousins who serve them tea. The tea ceremony ended around 2.30pm and we sent tai kam che (Chinese MC) back to her home in Aman Puri.

At 3.45pm, we headed to the bride and groom house in Kajang. It's said by tai kam che that at least a young kids must follow them back. They will have to jump up and down on the bed to give luck to the couple. It is said that this practice gives hope on the fertility of the couple and will make them produce an heir soon.

Then we fetch Daph relative back home and reached home around 6pm. We were so exhausted by then. Later we accompany Daph younger brother to their grandma house to pick 38 of her 'Ayam Kampung' for tomorrow wedding dinner in Thean Hou Gong. We slept at 10.15pm on that day as we are tired like mad. I would say it's a tiring but fun day. Tomorrow will be another hectic day. We have to get the stage done in Then Hou Gong and prepare other thing as her parent will cook for their son wedding dinner. Yeah, her mum will be cooking for 60+ Chinese wedding dinners!

Sitiawan and Taiping

2009-09-28T20:52:00.007+08:00

It's rather a busy weekend. Daph bro is getting married and the preparation is a little havoc. Now only got time to do a little blogging. I went to Sitiawan to attend Daph younger bro marriage dinner last Saturday (19/9/2009) with her family. We took the old road to Sitiawan and to Pantai Remis which is her brother's wife hometown.

It's rather interesting going via small road as you can see many small town or pekan. We took the Kuala Selangor road and the journey took us a total of near 4 hours from Kepong to reached Pantai Remis. We stay in a rented house while we were there and it situated only a few KM from Sitiawan and 50KM to Taiping. I was glad that it's very near to Taiping as I will be going to visit my sister new born baby on the next morning.

I must admit that 'kampung' wedding dinner start exactly on time unlike in KL. The wedding dinner is 6pm and by the time we reached there at 6.05pm due to some hiccups in our journey, everyone has already arrived. Wow! We were the pig leg (Daph bro and his wife) and yet we arrived late! It’s so different from KL, as normally the pig leg will be standing in front of the restaurant waiting for everyone to arrive. In KL, if the wedding dinner is said to be 7pm, it's actually 8.00-8.30pm before everyone can start to eat. Not to mention some even start at 9pm! I wonder if KL following Thailand time. Maybe we need to set out KL GMT to +8 instead of +7. The wedding dinner finish early at around 8.15pm in Pantai Remis. I am so not used to it as normally it will finish around 10pm something.

The celebration is quite good but the food in the restaurant is kinda below par. It is said to be one of the best restaurant in Pantai Remis but somehow it's not up to our expectation. The food here really is only a so so. After dinner, we went home to the rented house and it's photo shooting session.

The next morning, we visited Daph bro's wife house and her parents is kind enough to offer us a few fresh coconut to bring home. Anyway, there is a lot of flies in Pantai Remis especially her wife’s house. Just imagine if you were to drop a piece of 15" pizza on the floor, it will be fully covered by flies within a few second! No joke! I am not sure the reason behind this but I regretted that I closed my car door a few second too late. Lucky enough we managed to fought and expel the flies out through the window while on the way to Taiping. Daph family drove back to Kepong while we continued our journey to Taiping. The journey along the kampung road to Taiping was really refreshing in the morning. We drove slowly while enjoying the weather and sightseeing Malay celebrating Hari Raya festive in kampung.

Sister newborn baby Brian is really cute. He was only a few days old. Youyou is getting cheeky and naughtier but he seems really happy moving from Singapore to Taiping. Maybe it was due to Singapore houses was small in apartment while here in Taiping the house is so huge and he was able to run here and there. Moreover, there are a lot of people to play with him too. Ah Hun bought us to makan makan while we were in Taiping.

We went back the next day via old road but different route from where we came from. We stopped at a few places such as Ipoh, Bidor, Kampar and many more places which I couldn’t remember the name. It took us a total of 7 hours driving slowly back from Taiping to Kepong as we took our own sweet time exploring lot of small towns. It's a tiring but lovely trip.

Chef Ak in action - Friends Birthday Celebration

2009-09-15T21:05:00.015+08:00

I was a bit stunt when I invited 12 bunches of ‘honourable’ guesses for Ah Fatt and Sau Fong double celebration birthday. How do I cook 13 portions with such a small wok and small pot? How would it taste if I cook in large scale? Will I able to meet the demand? So far I have cook only for 6 person max. This time, double of the amount. How if I failed to cook acceptable dishes for everyone? I thought to myself…

Alas, I put all the thoughts behind and carry on with the plan on last Saturday morning. I bought some of the groceries in JJ, Kepong while waiting for Daph to finish her work. Then we had lunch with her friends and only started to look for other groceries around 5pm. I need to buy spare rib and lotus as I need to prepare overnight cooking in slow cooker. We went to 3 Giant but none has spare ribs. We only manage to find it in Carrefour Subang around 8pm but unfortunately, lotus root is still nowhere to be seen. Suddenly, I remembered there is a few shops that sell vegetable in Taipan and off we rushed to Taipan after buying the rest of the groceries. Lucky enough, we managed to get hold of the lotus root in one of the shops and we reached home at 9.30pm. We started to prepare lotus root soup and spare rib, peel and crush garlic, prepare jelly, chopped some vegetables and clean chicken meat for tomorrow's cooking. All this took us about an hour plus. Lucky enough Daph have bought me a bigger '2 in 1' cooking pot with steamer and a few pans.

The next morning we started to prepare all the dishes around 10.30am. The lunch will be held at 1.30pm and you might ask why the heck so early to do the cooking? Here, take a look at the list of dishes to cook.

1. Curry of Life
2. Orange Honey Chicken
3. Egg Ham
4. Fried Enoki Egg
5. Stuffed Mushroom with Pork and Fish Paste
6. Baby Kailan
7. Fanshu Leaf
8. Minced Pork Tofu
9. Fried Cabbage Tuna with Glass Noodles
10. Lotus with Spare Ribs
11. Konnyaku Jelly

Yup, a total of 10 dishes with 1 dessert! It was quite a challenge but at the same time I was damn excited. Lucky enough I have my helpful asst. Daph to help me with preparing core like washing, chopping, cutting and preparing the thing that I wanted to cook. Konnyaku Jelly was cook by her. I started to cook around 10.30am and finished by 1.30pm. A freaking 3 hours plus and yesterday 1 hour plus. Total of near 5 hours spend cooking for all this dishes. By the time I have finished cooking, I was so exhausted to even eat.

But all the tiredness went off when I see all my friends are happy and appreciate my cooking. In fact nearly all the dishes have been cleared up. The satisfaction seeing all the 10 dishes being eaten up are nowhere to describe. I am rather relieved as all the dishes have reasonable taste even though the quantity that I cook is in large portion. Take for example the fried cabbage tuna; it was really heavy and tiresome to stir fry one whole big wok of cabbage in it. The wok is medium size while the cabbage is damn a lot to even stir fry. It really required some skill to cook such a large amount of food. I am lucky that all the previous training really took off rather well. For the stuffed mushroom, only after when I took a bite of the mushroom when I realised that I completely forgotten to cook the oyster garlic sauce. It was suppose to have this sauce to go with.

Alas, everyone went home and it's time for me and Daph to really relax. We took a bath and straight went to bed. It was very tiring for both of us but one thing for sure is we felt rather satisfied for today's cooking. Hope they really enjoyed their meal and so does the birthday boy and birthday girl.

This last picture will give reader a sense of my 'honourable guesses'

Chef Ak in action - Orange Honey Chicken

2009-09-10T23:03:00.001+08:00

Orange Honey Chicken

Method and Ingredients
1. Combine flour, salt, and pepper together in a plate
2. Dip chicken in egg mixture and roll evenly in flour mixture to coat
3. Heat oil and deep fried the chicken until it turned golden colour
4. Take it out and put it aside
5. Mixed orange concentrate, honey and soy sauce together in a small bowl
6. Fry garlic and ginger to fragrant
7. Pour in a cup of water and mix sauce in step 5
8. Turn the heat to medium and let it boiled for a few minutes
9. Mix 1tb of cornstarch in quarter cup water and mix thoroughly
10. Slowly stir cornstarch mixture into sauce until it thickens
11. Put in the chicken and mix well
12. Garnish with slices of orange and spring onion

Stuffed Fish Paste Mushroom

Method and Ingredients
1. Takeaway the bones in the Mackerel fish and minced thoroughly
2. Dissolved some salt in water and slowly adding it into the mince fish
3. Set the fish paste aside
4. Soak dry mushrooms until softened
5. Fill up the mushroom with the fish paste
6. Placed the Siu Pak Choi onto serving plate
7. Steam the stuffed mushrooms for about 20 minutes
8. Make some oyster garlic sauce and place it on top of the mushroom
9. Sprinkle with spring onion

Dried Bean Curd Soup with Black Fungus

Method and Ingredients
1. Soak black fungus and glass noodles (tang hoon) in water for about 10 minutes
2. Bring water in pot to boiled and put in soak black fungus
3. Add in a few slices of Szechuan vegetable
4. Add in dried bean curd and simmer for 15 minutes
5. In another wok, fried beaten egg, drain away the oil and mix it into the soup
6. Let it simmer for another 10 minutes before putting in glass noodles

Overall I enjoyed the Orange Honey Chicken very much. It taste good and agreed by my fellow housemate. It's my first time and it seems to be quite successful. Stuffed Fish Paste Mushroom in the other hand resulted to be a little too salty for the fish paste. This was due to over putting salt and light soy sauce when minced the Mackerel fish. It could have been better. Nothing to shout about for the bean curd soup but just that I had put in a little too much of glass noodles. It doesn't look much at first but trust me, once it is soak in the water it became a lot.

I like to learn and cook new dishes as I tend to be over bored with the same old menu. Most of the recipe is taken from the net. I am sure you guys have notice that lately there is a little improvement in the appearance of my dishes. I am still learning on creating appealing dishes. Sometime a simple decoration will make the dishes look more pleasant.

Chef Ak in action - Sambal Mackerel Fish

2009-09-09T13:55:00.007+08:00

Sambal Mackerel Fish

Method and Ingredients
1. Marinate Mackerel fish with turmeric powder for 15 minutes
2. Fried in medium heat oil until it turn golden colour on both side
3. Took the fish out and add in garlic
4. Add in big onion and stir fry for 2 minutes
5. Add in chili paste, sugar, salt and light soy sauce to taste
6. Mix the sambal sauce together with the fish
7. Garnish with spring onion

Cabbage Tuna Egg

Method and Ingredients
1. Cut the cabbage to small slices.
2. Fry the garlic to fragrant
3. Add in tuna chunk and beaten egg together
4. Add in cabbage and continuous stir fry
5. Add in 1/2 tsp of salt to taste.
6. Garnish with spring onion and fried shallots

Baked Bean Egg

Method and Ingredients
1. Fry garlic to fragrant.
2. Add in beaten egg and stir fry for 1 minute
3. Pour in a can of Ayam Brand baked bean
4. Mix well and bring it to boiled
5. Garnish with spring onion

This is the first time I ever cook fish dishes. It turnout good and I kinda like it. All this while I didn't know that Ikan Tenggiri is actually named Mackerel fish in english. I thought it was some kind of sardine fish as I saw this word quite often in can of Ayam brand lol.

Chef Ak in action - Black Fungus Chicken

2009-09-08T20:27:00.005+08:00

Black Fungus Mushroom Chicken

Method and Ingredients
1. Fry garlic to fragrant
2. Add in sliced ginger and soak dried mushroom
3. Add in chicken and stir fry for 10 minutes
4. Pour in light and dark soy sauce, oyster sauce, salt and pepper
5. Transfer to a pot and add in black fungus
6. Simmer for another 15 minutes

Cabbage Tuna

Method and Ingredients
1. Cut the cabbage to small slices.
2. Fry the garlic to fragrant
3. Add in tuna chunk
4. Add in cabbage and continuous stir fry
5. Add in 1/2 tsp of salt to taste.
6. Garnish with spring onion

Minced Chicken Tofu

Method and Ingredients
1. Fry garlic and minced chicken to fragrant
2. Take it out and add in the tofu
3. Add in soak dried mushroom
4. Sprinkle preserved radish on top of tofu
5. Add in oyster sauce, sesame oil, and pepper, light and dark soy sauce
6. Steamed in under high heat for 15 minutes
6. Garnish with spring onion

I actually dun quite like black fungus as it's kinda tasteless but it seems to have some potential benefit to improve health. If you want to know, please google the benefit of black fungus. The Black Fungus Chicken is a little too salty where else other dishes are good. My Black Fungus Corn soup is a failure as it tastes not too good. This is mainly because of the overnight cooking in slow cooker that overkills the soup. Soups such as corn, tomato, white or red carrot just to name a few is not suitable to be cooked overnight in slow cooker. Somehow it either didn't bring out the taste or totally overkill it. Only vegetable that is hard such as lotus root or herbal soup benefits for overnight cooking using slow cooker. A lesson learned.

PS: Most of my cooking blog that I posted here are yesterday night cooking. Tonight cooking will be publish by tomorrow night.

Mum's KL Visit

2009-09-01T20:32:00.006+08:00

29/08/2009

I fetch my mum from Melaka and we head to KL at 10.30am. This is her first official visit to my rented house and KL visit. Upon arriving at my house in Subang, we rested for a while and headed to our first destination, Sunway Piramid. We took our lunch at Dragon I and mum was impressed with the classy environment of the restaurant. The place where we were seated overlooks Sunway Lagoon which is rather a great view. However, for the food, the beef and Szechuan Ramen and 'Xiao Long Pao' were just an average joe to her. Then we do some window shopping before heading back home for a bath and rest. Mum couldn't walk much as her leg is not very good due to her heart surgery many years ago.

Around 5pm in the evening, we headed to Daph’s house and later to KLCC. She has been to KLCC before but it was quite a long long time ago. We took her dinner at Sakae Sushi and she told me that Sushi King taste better than Sakae. Somehow, it was very true as KLCC Sakae sushi is not really up to par. Perhaps it was because the restaurant was too packed at that time. We even waited for about 15min before we had a place. After dinner, we took some KLCC photo together and have a short window shopping there before calling it for a day.

30/08/2009

We woke up as early as 8.00am as we are going for Sunday Mass in Kepong church. I brought mum for breakfast in Teochew Fishball noodles in DU and later fetched Daph together to attend mass which started at 10.30am. After mass we head to PJ and had our Seafood Porridge lunch. This should be the tastiest porridge I have eaten so far in my entire life. However take note that it cost RM32 a pot but could easily feed 3 people and the ingredient is rather generous.

After lunch it's time for Sungai Wang shopping. We went to Lowyat and Sungai Wang and had our teatime at U-Village. A rather boring time for me but a heavenly time to Daph and my mum as they happily shopping for shoes and clothes. Yawn. Luckily there is many handphone store around for me to window shop. Haha. We headed to Petaling Street around 4.30pm and had the famous Mata Kuching drink. We walk around Petaling Street and browse through lots of handbags and clothes while we were there.

We then drive to The Curve and again do some shopping at FOS before we finally had our scrumptious dinner at Cineleisure Tony Roma's. We ordered TR Sampler Ribs and ribeye. Last time me and Daph ordered 7oz filet mignon cook in medium rare which is too adventurous for us. So this time, we ordered a 10oz ribeye cook in medium instead. It tastes perfectly to us. We also ordered a Potatoes Baked soup and Onion Loaf. Mum seems to enjoy the dinner very much. I can feel that my stomach is getting more and more bloated! We take a stroll along Cineleisure before calling it for a day.

31/08/2009

Today is our Independence Day but somehow there is not much celebration. Some said this was cause by H1N1 but the fact is most Malaysian is fed up with the never-ending political drama. I won't go detail into political issues as it's not worth blogging. Today morning as usual we headed to Daph house to pick her up. Then we go to the famous Ikea. Mum was rather impressed at Ikea as there are many things to see and buy. She has never seen such a gigantic furniture shop in her entire life before. She bought a few small thing and we had our lunch at Ikea. We ordered meatball and Swiss cake. After Ikea, it's time for me to send mum back to Melaka. We reached Melaka around 3.45pm. I had a great time with my mum during her present.

Chef Ak in action - Ayam Masak Merah

2009-08-27T20:12:00.007+08:00

Ayam Masak Merah

Method and Ingredients
1. Fry garlic to fragrant
2. Add in chicken and potatoes
3. Add in Ayam Masak Merah powder and salt
4. Stir fry and mix well
5. Add in some water and 6 slices of tomatoes
6. Stir fry for about 15 minutes and add cut chillies
7. Simmer for another 10 minutes

Cabbage Eggs

Method and Ingredients
1. Cut the cabbage to small slices.
2. Fry the garlic and prawn for 2 minutes
3. Pour the egg in and stir fry
4. Add in cabbage and fry until dry.
5. Add in 1/2 tsp of salt to taste.

Chinese Spinach

Method and Ingredients
1. Fry garlic to fragrant
2. Add in chinese spinach
3. Add some water and salt to taste

Tenpayaki Beansprout aka Taugeh

Method and Ingredients
1. Fry sliced garlic to fragrant
2. Took it out and add in soak sliced mushroom
3. Stir fry and add in light soy sauce and blackpepper sauce
4. Add in beansprout, pepper and salt
5. Stir fry for about 5 minutes and add in fried garlic slices.

I am thinking that my cooking is a little towards salty now. I need to cut off salt and oil usage especially for frying dishes. The Ayam masak merah, the potatoes is still a little uncooked but it taste good. Next time I should fry the potatoes first before cooking. I am not sure what is the green vegetable was but it's a little salty as I accidentally added a tsp of salt into it. Half tsp should be better. As usual, I love the cabbage eggs but the tenpayaki taugeh is a little different from the real tenpayaki and I suspect some missing nin here.

Chef Ak in action - Sambal Kerang (Cockles)

2009-08-26T19:29:00.001+08:00

Sambal Kerang (Cockles)

Method and Ingredients
1. Fry garlic and onion
2. Mix chili paste with light soy sauce and sugar
3. Add in mixed chili paste and water
4. Off the heat and add in cockles
5. Stir fry to mix well

Kangkung Belacan

Method and Ingredients
1. Clean and cut the Kangkung
2. Heat up the oil and fry the garlic and shallots
3. Add in sambal belacan and chili paste
4. Throw in Kangkung and fry until cook
5. Add some sugar

O Kui Tou rice

Method and Ingredients
1. Fry garlic, dried shrimp and shallots to fragrant
2. Add in soak slices of mushroom and chicken chunk
3. Add in o kui tou and fry for 5 minutes
4. Add in oyster sauce, dark and light soy sauce and a tsp of salt
5. Stir fry to mix well
6. Add in 1 large bowl of water and wait until it boiled
7. Transfer it into rice cocker with clean rice in it
8. Press the cook button

Corn soup with Szechuan vegetable

Method and Ingredients
1. Cut corn, 2 tomatoes and Szechuan vegetable
2. Cut 2 tomatoes into 8 slices
3. Sliced a few Szechuan vegetable
4. Throw everything into a pot of water and bring it to boiling
2. Add in salt to taste and simmer for another 20-30 minutes

This is the first time that the O Kui Tou rice failed me. It is only 80% cook! I am started to think that the rice cooker is up to his limit already. It all started when I cook tomato rice. Maybe his time is up. I steamed it with wok but this time adding in water. Luckily the result is good. Haha..

I love the rawness of the Sambal cockles. It's still juicy when you bite it. The cockles easily overcook, so you need to watch the heat. It's preferable to turn off the heat once you throw in the cockles. You just need to stir and mix it well.

Kangkung belacan is a little too spicy but I still love it. The soup is good too. Man, it's already been over a month plus and I still love to cook. A good or bad sign?? Macam Si lai!

Chef Ak in action - Char Kuey Teow v1.1

2009-08-23T21:18:00.002+08:00

Char Kuey Teow

Method and Ingredients
1. Heat wok to real hot and fry garlic and shallots to fragrant
2. Add in prawn and fishcake. Stir fry until the prawn turn pinkish
3. Add in light, dark soy sauce, oyster sauce, salt, special chili and pepper
4. Place in the hor fun and continue to stir fry evenly
5. Move everything to one side of the wok and crack in eggs
6. Lower the heat while throw in cockles and stir fry for 10 seconds
7. Off the heat and add in a handful of beansprouts and stir fry for 5 seconds
8. Remove the dish to plates and serve hot.

Chicken Oats

Method and Ingredients
1. Deep the cut chicken in beaten eggs
2. Roll it in oats (Red Quaker oats)
3. Sprinkle it with salt
4. Deep fried the chicken until golden brown

This CKT v1.1 is very much nicer than the previous one. This time, the hawker CKT feel is there. I am not sure what the reason is but I guess the heat of the wok play an important role here. Adding in cockles is definitely a must for cockle’s lover. Just remember to fry cockles and beansprout with very low heat for only 5-10 seconds before served.

I learned the chicken oats recipe from a bookstore in JJ, Kepong while I was lepaking there yesterday. It seems pretty easy from the book and I thought why not I try it myself? So I bought Quaker Oat and did it today. The outcome is pretty nice and crispy on the outer layer but kinda tasteless in the inside part (meat). Perhaps if I marinate it with curry powder and cook it with curry leaf, the taste will be better.

Chef Ak in action - Nasi Lemak & Curry of Life

2009-08-22T10:47:00.002+08:00

Nasi Lemak v2.0
Method and Ingredients
1. Prepare rice as in normal cooking
2. Pour in 200ml trim coconut milk
3. Put in tied pandan leaf and ginger sliced
4. Stir to mix well
5. Add in 1 tsp salt
6. Press cook button

Curry of Life v1.1
Method and Ingredients
1. Marinate chicken with turmeric powder overnight
2. Fry the garlic, curry leaf, onion, tomato, chili padi, sugar and chili boh
3. Add in the curry paste and water then stir-fry until fragrant.
4. Add the chicken and stir-fry so that the chicken is coated with the curry paste.
5. Put in potatoes and stir for a minute and add the 1tbsp sugar and 1 tsp salt
6. Transfer it to big claypot with 3pcs of lemongrass and let it simmer with low heat
7. Add in 150ml coconut milk into the curry and stir evenly
8. Simmer for another 10 minutes.

So here is it, the upgraded version of nasi lemak v2.0. It's sad to say that this v2 nearly failed me. It happens like the previous tomatoes rice that I cooked but at least this one is already 80% cooked. The cook button pops up after a minute I have open the rice lids to stir. Damn, it’s so frustrating! So I steamed it in wok for another 10 minutes. To those of you who have cooked rice with coconut milk or other liquids or stocks, you will probably know the frustration of not being able to get the rice to cook properly. Next time I should add in the coconut milk only later when the rice is half cook and still wet. Btw, I just get to know that if you wan to recook the rice, you need to add in more water. Perhaps I should try Nasi Lemak v2.1 soon.

Curry of Life v1.1 is an upgraded version as I added in several more ingredients such as lemongrass, tomatoes, onion, chili padi and sugar. With all the additional ingredients I have put in, this v1.1 is a little heavier in taste which is of course produce more fragrant, spicier or simply more ummppp or kick. This is definitely for heavy taste bud person. However, I still prefer the previous curry as it is more lite version.

Chef Ak in action - Nasi Lemak

2009-08-19T19:55:00.003+08:00

Method and Ingredients
1. Prepare rice as in normal cooking
2. Pour in coconut milk
3. Put in tied pandan leaf and ginger sliced
4. Stir to mix well
5. Press cook button

Sambal Anchovy (Ikan Bilis)
1. Mix chili paste with light soy sauce, sambal belacan and sugar
2. Fry Ikan Bilis until it turn brown
3. Add in garlic and onion
4. Add in mixed chili paste and water
5. Stir fry and mix well

ABC Soup
1. Cut 2 tomatoes into 8 slices
2. Cut 1 big onion and potatoes
3. Cut half Szechuan veg into thin slices
4. Boiled water and throw all above in
5. Put in 'biji biji' pepper
6. Add in anchovy and salt to taste
7. Finally add in some fishball

The nasi lemak fragrant is there but it's a little too light. Can consider as Nasi Lemak lite version as I only put in very little of coconut milk. It's the leftover from cooking Curry of Life the other day. Normal recipe of Nasi Lemak using thick coconut milk but I am only using light coconut milk. Top with fried egg, own fried groundnut, sambal ikan bilis and fried ikan bilis. Missing nin will be cucumber. Overall, it is still acceptable.

Chef Ak in action - Char Kuey Teow

2009-08-18T19:42:00.001+08:00

Method and Ingredients
1. Heat wok and fry garlic to fragrant
2. Add in squid, prawn and fishcake. Stir fry for until the prawn turn pinkish
3. Add in light, dark soy sauce, special chili and pepper
4. Place in the hor fun/mee and continue to stir fry
5. Move everything to one side of the wok and crack in an egg
6. Fry it all together and then throw in a handful of beansprouts (a few seconds)
7. Remove the dish to plates and serve hot.

A CKT lover will know there is a few 'missing nin' in the recipe above. Yes, first and foremost is cockles aka siham. I couldn't get hold of siham as the shop that I frequent are out of stock. Second missing nin will be fried lard. It’s bad for health but taste from heaven. Third will be spring onion. Anyway, some might wonder why there is mixed yellow noodle when I said it's CKT? Well, just to clear my yellow noodle old stock. Haha

Overall the taste of CKT fragrant is just not there. It still tastes great with prawn and squid but the feel is just not there. I couldn't figure out what is the secret recipe from the hawker center. Mine doesn't taste like CKT eventhough the major ingredients are there. I dun think so that fried lard and cockles will have major impact on CKT. Is it because of the fire? Or could it be that I fried 3 plates once instead of one by one? Perhaps the secret lies in the special light and dark soy sauce they are using? Hmmm, I just don't know why.

Change Feng Shui in My Room

2009-08-17T22:49:00.003+08:00

Yesterday I decided to buy a cupboard as my room doesn't have a proper storage for my clothes. I have been thinking to get one for a long time and finally bought it at Carrefour yesterday noon. The Carrefour assistant gave us a number to call for assembles of the cupboard. When I phoned the servicing guy, he told me that he charges RM50 to assemble it. Wow, the cupboard only cost RM80 and he wanted to charge Rm50 for that. I just told him that I will think about it.

So we decided to DIY ourselves and bought it back home. After opening the box and look at the work instruction, we are so blank, confused and in blur like sotong condition. While still in confusion, coincidently my mobile phone rang as the service guy call me as if he know that I am in confusion. I told him it's too expensive for that service he offered and he reduced it to Rm40 and later Rm30 after feeling that I am not interested in his service anymore. Before I even agree, he told me to send him my house address via sms.

Old room look

On that time, my housemate came knocking at my door room and offered us guava. So I pulled him in and ask him for idea and he assemble the cupboard together with us. Haha. 3 brains are better than 2 brains. I sms the service guy telling him I dun need his service anymore and he phone me again. This time I didn't answer the phone. I guess he might offer me Rm20 only. Hack, I dun need it already. So 3 of us assemble it ourselves and once we fully digest the diagram and work instruction, it become much clearer and easier. We finished assembling it in less than 30 minutes.

New room look

Daph gave me some idea of moving some furniture to get more space. We moved and cleaned here and there and putting everything in order. All this took us more than 3 hours job. We then rushed to Rawang for friend’s full moon buffet dinner and by the time we reached there, is a little too late at 9.00pm.

I am quite satisfied with the new fresh look in my room. The next thing I am going to change is the computer chair and later computer table. Still no budget for both the item yet.

Chef Ak in action - Cordon Bleu Chicken

2009-08-16T23:45:00.028+08:00

On last Saturday dinner, I decided to cook western food for my fellow friends. I went to JJ in Kepong to get all my items needed for dinner. The menu is Cordon Bleu Chicken and black pepper spaghetti as main dishes, garlic bread, mushroom soup, French fries and chicken wing as entree and orange juice as drinks.

Cordon Bleu Chicken
1. Pound the chicken breast to flatten it
2. Place one slice of cheese on top of the breasts
3. Add one slice of chicken ham on top of the cheese
4. Start at the narrow end and roll the breast completely
5. Roll the chicken breast into the flour to cover completely with flour
6. Place the chicken breast into the egg and roll the breast in the same direction
7. Roll the chicken breast into the bread crumbs
8. Add enough oil in the wok (I dun have pan) and heat it to real hot
9. The oil should bubble when placing the chicken breast into the wok
10. Make sure the seam end breast is on the bottom first to prevent unfolding
11. Deep fry till it turn into golden brown and flip them over
12. Check to make sure they are golden brown before taking them out.

Black Pepper Beef Spaghetti
1. Cook the spaghetti in the boiling water as instructed on the package
2. Add two teaspoon of salt
3. Drain it and set aside
4. Fry crush garlic in the heated oil to fragrant
5. Add in button and soak mushroom and minced beef
6. Pour in black pepper sauce, pepper and salt to taste.
7. Add in spaghetti and stir fry to even.

For garlic bread just spread the garlic butter and baked it over 200 degree in the oven. Do not use French loaf as the result will be extremely hard after baking. It's my mistake that I have bought a french loaf as my garlic bread.

I bought big US potatoes and slice it together with the skin. Make sure the skin is completely clean though. Deep fry the potatoes until it turned golden brown, take it out and sprinkle some salt and fried garlic. Somehow the outcome is not that good. The French fries is crispy when just taking out from the wok but it became too soft in no time.

I am not sure how Daph did her marinated baked chicken wing but it taste rather good. This is my first time preparing western cuisine for my friends. I love the Cordon Bleu Chicken but the meat is a little too tough. On each plate, there is baked corn, salad and baked bean. I made a total of 3 plates of spaghetti where two are beef and another is chicken. Somehow I prefer the beef version. The French fries is a little soft while the garlic bread is hard. The mushroom soup taste just nice with pastry flake and slices of button and soak mushroom.

Overall, it's a successful western dinner. It seems to me like everyone enjoyed it. We have fun and a wonderful Saturday night. The preparation for all this took me and Daph more than 4 hours. By looking at the picture, the dishes lacking some decoration. Next time I need to learn how to decorate my dishes to make it look more pleasant. After dinner, we watch Harry Porter at Pavilion at 12.05am and comeback around 3.30am. We are so exhausted by the end of the day.

Chef Ak in action - Wa Tan Hor

2009-08-14T07:46:00.000+08:00

Method and Ingredientss
1. Fry garlic to fragrant
2. Add in hor fun, dark and light soy sauce
3. Stir fry over high heat until all mix well and set aside
4. Add 2 tsp of oil and heat it. Add in 1 tsp of sesame oil into the oil
5. Fry the garlic, prawn, minced pork, choy sum, fishcake, cabbage and carrot
6. Add in chicken stock and later cornflour and stir well to form thick gravy
7. Beat egg and slowly add in the gravy and turn the heat to low
8. Add in 1/2 tsp of salt and hor fun
9. Stir for 1 minute and serve hot

Wow, I must say it's rather a successful cook. It tastes like ‘tai chou’ wa tan hor but just a little too dry. There is some wrong amount of ingredientss I notice later on such as 6 tablespoon of cornflour but I thought it was only 6 teaspoon. This is because I wrongly read tsp and tbsp. The cornflour supposed to mix with water but I didn't mix it first and instead I straight away pour into the heated wok thus some of the flour is uneven mixture. It’s supposed to add 1000ml of water but I only add in 500ml. The wrong quantity of mixture causes the wa tan hor a little dry otherwise it will be just nice. I will certainly cook this again and put in the correct quantity ingredients.

Chef Ak in action - Ginger Mushroom Chicken

2009-08-13T20:07:00.000+08:00

Today I decided to cook ginger mushroom chicken for my housemate and a few friends of mine. When I sms them, some are rather surprise of the invitation.

Ginger Mushroom Chicken
1. Crush 2 pcs of ginger and mixed with oyster, sesame oil, dark and light soy sauce
2. Marinate the chicken with above. (The longer the better)
3. Fry garlic with preheated oil to fragrant
4. Pour in the marinated chicken and stir fry evenly for 10 minutes
5. Add in chunk of potatoes and soak mushroom
6. Transfer all to claypot and let it simmer low heat for 20 minutes

Steam Eggs with Mince Pork
1. Mixed sesame oil, light soy sauce, pepper, 1/4 tsp salt, 1 tsp sugar in small bowl
2. Marinate it with minced pork and crush ginger for 20minutes.
3. Cut filament crabstick
4. Steam for 20 minutes or more depending on the heat.

(Blue Lake Bush)O kui tou with Eggs
1. Fry garlic and dried shrimp to fragrant
2. Add in cut Blue Lake Bush (sounds funny) chilies and stir fry for 10 minutes.
3. Beat the eggs into the wok and continue to stir fry for another 5 minutes.
4. Add in salt to taste.

Sambal Anchovy (Ikan Bilis)
1. Fry Ikan Bilis until it turn brown
2. Add in garlic and onion
3. Stir fry for 5 minutes with chili paste and water.

ABC Soup
1. Cut 2 tomatoes into 8 slices
2. Add 6 slices of Szechuan veg
3. Add in anchovy
4. Pork rib is a must
5. Boiled in pot for 20 minutes and simmer in slow cooker for 30 minutes or more.
6. Add salt to taste

My friends told me that the ginger smell from the chicken is too strong thus covering the mushroom smells. Most of them prefer the ginger to be in slice form and not crush or minced. Somehow I still prefer crush ginger maybe because my mum used to cook in this way.

Chef Ak in action - Mee Goreng

2009-08-10T21:15:00.002+08:00

Method and Ingredients
1. Bring water to boil. Cook the noodles for 30 seconds, drain and set aside
2. In a small bowl combine chili sauce, tomato sauce, dark and light soy sauce, sugar, sambal belacan and 1/4 tsp salt
3. In another small bowl, beat an egg
4. Preheat the wok and put in oil
5. Fry the garlic and shallots to fragrant
6. Add in minced pork and prawn and fry for 3-4 minutes
7. Slowly add in the egg until it's lightly scrambled
8. Add in the noodles and some water and stir fry
9. Pour in the combined sauce and stir fry evenly for another 3-5 minutes

Well, the final product is good but a little sticky. Perhaps I pour in too much of water. Anyway, I still love it. Simple and fast.

Chef Ak in action - Chicken Mushroom

2009-08-09T20:57:00.005+08:00

Method and Ingredients
1. Heat up the oil and fry the garlic and shallots
2. Mix in minced ginger and stir fry to fragrant
3. Put in the chicken and fry for 5 minutes
4. Add in water and potatoes and bring to boil
5. Transfer into claypot mixed with soak dried mushroom
6. Simmer for 15 minutes or until the chicken and potatoes are cook

Daph cook the rest of the dishes. O kui tou fried with egg, cabbage with mushroom and tofu with minced pork. I love the o kui tou with egg and the cabbage. The tofu had an average taste. For the soup, I cook it using slow cooker. It's an old cucumber and white carrot soup. The fragrant in not there eventhough it's being cook for 7 hours. Perhaps the soup is too light as there is no meat but just ikan bilis, white carrot, groundnut and old cucumber.

Overall I really enjoy eating the mushroom chicken. It’s just that the potatoes are a little too large and there are too many mushrooms. Daph cooking slightly improved. I am sure if she continues to do more practical she will be better than me anytime. I need to be more gambateh liau.

Chef Ak in failure - Tomato Rice

2009-08-07T21:45:00.003+08:00

Ah... my first official failure after nearly a month doing practical in my cooking life. I was reading newspaper during my lunch time in office yesterday when I stumble upon Heinz tomatoes advertisement showing how to cook tomato rice. I thought to myself, why not? It seems easy enough. So I bought all the ingredient needed when I am on my way back after working and started the cooking process.

1. Fry the garlic, shallots, chili and fresh cut tomatoes.
2. Add in chicken chunk and fry for 5 minutes.
3. Add in turmeric powder and tomatoes puree/paste
4. Pour in water and add salt to taste and let it cook for another 10 minutes.

Then I transferred it into rice cooker and happily waiting to try out the tomato rice. Not even 5 minute have I pressed the cook button, it jumps up indicating the rice is already cook. Immediately I sense something is so wrong. When I open the rice cooker lid, sure enough the rice is still in grain form totally uncooked. Damn!

Btw, in case you don’t know, when the rice is cooked, you cannot press ‘Cook’ again because the darn button will pop back to ‘Warm’ like a stubborn child. I waited for the button to pop up back thinking to cook it again but it failed to pop up. So I took the whole pot to cook under gas stove. Apparently I found out that the rice cooker jumps up before the rice are cook is because of the tomato liquid too thick. So I add in a big cup of water but it ended up a little too wet.

Alas, after 10 minutes of cooking, the rice turnout to be still on soft side likes congee. The smell on the rice cooker pot is already burnout and crusty. I thought it's useless to cook anymore as the bottom part has already badly burnout.

We still could eat it but it's just a little soft. The taste will have been rather good if the rice is properly cooked. What I found out in the net is actually not easy to cook tomato rice. Even some veteran cook in the net sometime failed in making tomato rice as the paste must not be too thick or too watery. Here is the link

A lesson learned. This is obviously an F grade. Ohh, and the damn pot are still in burnout black condition after 3 times of washing it yesterday night. Anyone want to sponsor me a new pot perhaps?

Chef Ak in action - Baby Corn and Mushroom

2009-08-05T23:26:00.000+08:00

1. Heat up the oil and fry garlic and shallots
2. Add chili padi, baby corn and dried mushroom (that have been soaking by hot water)
3. Pour in some water and fry for 5 minutes
4. Add in enoki mushroom and fishball
5. A teaspoon of salt to taste

1. Heat up oil and fry garlic, dried shrimp and shallots
2. Add in chili padi, soak dried mushroom, and mushroom
3. Pour in some water and fry for 5 minutes
4. Add in enoki mushroom and fishcake
6. A teaspoon of salt to taste

Chef Ak in action - Curry of Life

2009-08-03T21:02:00.004+08:00

I invited a few friends of mine to be my white mice on last Saturday dinner. The main dish that I am gonna cook is Curry of Life. Nevermind on the name as I got it from the anime. I get the recipe from the net and reference from Delimas curry paste box. This is how I cook my Curry of Life.

1. Fry the garlic and curry leaf
2. Mixed it with turmeric powder, chilli boh and a packet of Delimas curry paste
3. Throw in the chicken (I use half chicken)
4. Fry the chicken until all equally mixed and the chicken turn yellow/golden colour
5. Put in the potatoes and water (about 300ml)
5. Transfer it to big claypot and let it simmer for 30 minutes with low heat
6. Add in 100ml coconut milk into the curry and stir evenly
7. Simmer for another 10 minutes.

Then Daph joined in the fun as she tried her mum recipe. Fried lotus with chilli padi, curry leaf and pandan leave. It seems that she fried the lotus till brown; later add in the curry leaf and chilli padi. Lastly she put in the pandan leaf. The next dishes I am cooking are fried cabbage with egg. This is the third time I cooked this dish.

1. Cut the cabbage to small slices.
2. Fry the garlic, dried shrimp and prawn for 2 minute and took the prawn out
3. Pour the egg that have beaten and fry for about 2 minutes.
4. Throw in the cabbage and fry it till dry. It will take about 10 minutes or more
5. Then add in the prawn and some salt to taste.

Si Mian Tou is next on my cooking list. Basically it's easy to cook but I didn’t know how long I need to cook this. So ended up not so well. I should have mixed it with a little of sambal belacan and it will certainly turnout better.

1. Fry the garlic and dried shrimp
2. Add in Si Mian Tou and fry it
3. Add in some water and continue frying it for another 5 minutes

My next menu is Pork Mince Tofu. I just fried the mince pork mixed with light and dark soy sauce. Steam the tofu with mushroom mixed with light, dark soy sauce and oyster sauce. Steamed it for around 15 minutes and serve while hot. My last dishes are Chawanmushi. (Forgotten to snap photo!)

My friends arrived just in time and waited for a while for the Chawanmushi. Overall everything turned well. I myself love the Curry of Life. The fragrance is certainly there thanks to the curry leaf. The potatoes are soft and simply delicious in my humble opinion. The lotus root soup turnout to be very nice after long hours of slow cooking. The Si Mian Tou doesn't turn too well as its a little bitter indicating it's not fully cooked yet. This is my first time cooking this vegetables and I doesn’t know how long to cook it. I love the pork mince tofu as well. Certainly Daph Fried lotus is nice too and it was crispy and the fragrance smells good as well. Lastly will be the Chawanmushi and I love every bits of it.

I am not sure whether my friends simply wanna goes commercial on my food but it seems they certainly enjoyed the curry of life very much. Should I retire with glory now or should I continue to pursue and upgrade my masak masak skill? I guess I am gonna stay a tad longer playing masak masak.

Chef Ak in action - Sambal Belacan Prawn, Kangkung Belacan, Lotus Root

2009-08-02T20:18:00.001+08:00

Yesterday morning we went to Pasar Desa and bought several vegetables and meats as I decided to cook lunch for Daph and dinner for a few friends of mine. This is the first time I actually visited the morning wet market to get my own cooking ingredients. We didn't actually bargain on anything at all due to the facts that we didn't even know the market price for all those vegetables and meats.

Once we reached home, we started to do preparation on the thing we bought. I must agree that preparation is more tedious than cooking itself. Thanks to Daph that she do most of the preparation. I started up by boiling a pot of water while Daph cutting the lotus root. Then as the water boiled, I threw in ground peanut, pork rib and later lotus root and bring it to boil. After about 30 minutes, I then transfer the lotus soup into the slow cooker and let it simmer with high temperature.

The second dish that I prepared was the O Kui Tou rice. I fried the O Kui Tou mixed with mushroom, dried shrimp, garlic and chicken chunk. Then added in salt, light and dark soy sauce and oyster sauce to taste and later transfer it to the rice cooker pot which I had prepared the rice earlier on.

The third dishes that I cooked are Sambal Belacan Prawn. This is my method of cooking.

1. Peel away all the prawn shell and clean up the body. (Throw away the shits too!)
2. Heat the oil and fry the garlic.
3. Throw in chili boh, big onion, tomatoes and sambal belacan
4. Lastly put in the prawn and some water and fry for about 5 minutes.
5. Add sugar and salt to taste.

The last dishes for me too cook for this lunch is Kangkung Belacan. Here is how I did it in steps again.

1. Clean and cut the Kangkung
2. Heat up the oil and fry the garlic.
3. Throw in sambal belacan and shallots
4. Throw in Kangkung and fry until cook
5. Add some sugar

We had our lunch around 1.30pm. Overall I love the sambal belacan prawn and kangkung very much. The lotus root is a little hard to chew and the pork rib is still not as tender as I wanted. The soup is actually for tonight dinner and I am pretty sure that it will be very nice and aromatic after hours of cooking in the slow cooker.

Chef Ak in action - Chawanmushi

2009-07-30T21:42:00.004+08:00

This is my first attempt at preparing a big size of Chawanmushi. Here is how I do it.

1. Beat 3 eggs into a bowl
2. Then cut filament crabstick in small dice
3. Soak dried mushroom for 20 minutes and cut into small chunk
4. Mix it all into egg bowl and beat it together.
5. Add 1 teaspoon of salt
6. Add approximately 200ml of water
7. Steam it for 25-30 minutes

How was it taste like? Erm, a typical chawanmushi lor minus the appearance. I should have added a little pepper for better taste. I will rate myself a B for this.

Chef Ak in action - Long Bean Rice, Egg Cabbage, Tauki, Fishball Soup

2009-07-29T21:00:00.001+08:00

This is my second time cooking Long Bean Rice and I could say this one definitely tasted much better than the previous one. The previous one I put in small pcs of dried scallop and this time I substitute it with dried shrimp. The reason I put in dried scallop on that time was because there is no dried shrimp available. Instead of using long bean (Chai Tou), I used 'O Kui Tou' this time. The rice was added in more water as the previous one is a little too dry and hard. This time the result it quite good.

The fried egg cabbage is equally good too. I love this dry type of cooking. Some people love it dry while other prefers a little wet. It takes time to cook this cabbage as you need to fry until the cabbage dry. I wanted to throw in prawns but there is no prawn available in the market I go. So I put in a little chunk of chicken meat and the outcome is good too.

Then the next dish is Tauki cook ala chili sauce and some other ingredients. Not bad in my humble opinion. The last one is fishball soup. Simple and fast to cook. I just throw in tomatoes, ikan bilis, ginger and fish ball into the soup.

This Saturday I am going to cook for Daph. It will be the first time I cook Chinese dishes for her. The menu is more and less like this one. There could be additional sambal prawn and other veges too. We will just see what we could get in the morning wet market. The soup I am going to cook will be Lotus Root and the meat that I am putting in will be pork rib. I am sure the taste will be even better. It's hard to buy pork rib as most of the minimart doesn't sell it

Let's just see how long I will enjoy main masak masak. Normally I am the kind of person that are '3 minute excitement.' So to all my friends, please enjoy while you still can.

Penang Trip 2009 (Part 4)

2009-07-27T19:32:00.001+08:00

Today is our last day here in Penang. One thing bad about Tune hotel is check in late at 2.00pm but check out early at 10.00am. If you stayed in the room after 10.00am, the power card will automatically cut off all the power in your room. After checking out from Tune, we head to Sungai Pinang for the famous curry mee.

The stall located just in front of Honda showroom at Sungai Pinang. The curry mee only cost Rm3 per bowl and the portion is kinda small. The curry is spicy with the hint of light coconut, sambal, top with fresh cockles, prawns and squids. We didn't go for the more famous one such as Lorong Seratus Tahun curry mee as there are a few branches in Selangor. We also ordered duck mee sua which is also a famous there. In my humble opinion, it's a little too oily. I still prefer the one in Bidor.

It's time to say goodbye to Penang. We headed back via Penang Bridge and reached Taiping around 12.30pm. Sister and her husband treat us western lunch in Paronama Hotel. Then we rested at their home for a while and headed to Taiping Lake. I must admit that Taiping Lake really does have beautiful scenery. This is my third visit here and as for Daph, it was her first time here. Of course she was stunned and surprised by the beauty of the lake. We left Taiping at 4.30pm and head to Ipoh for dinner.

By 5.29pm we are already at the famous Lou Wong Bean Sprouts Chicken shop (Nga Choi Gai). Besides being the most famous, Lou Wong was also agreed, by many to serve one of the best Bean Sprouts Chicken Rice in Ipoh. We ordered their bean sprouts, steam chicken; beef ball soup, chicken rice and kuey teow. The kuey teow here is very smooth and tasty because of the sweet, flavorful soup. The famous beef ball in the other hand is big and the texture is springy and bouncy. I love their fat juicy bean sprouts very much. The steam chicken skin is slippery smooth and taste good as well. Just a few steps away from Lou Wong, there are Ipoh famous Tau Foo Fah shop but unfortunately, the Tau Foo Fah already sold out. We just get to taste their soya milk mix with Cincau which is kinda normal.

We reached home sweet home in Kepong around 8.15pm. It’s another good journey we both had together. We were supposed to fly off to China on 19th July 2009 and celebrate my birthday in China but due to H1N1, we postpone our China trip to October. I am glad that we postpone the trip as in July, the weather in China is extremely hot. October considered the best time to visit as it’s not too cold or too hot. I really enjoyed our makan makan trip in Penang and definitely having a great time here.

My 28th Birthday

2009-07-26T15:09:00.005+08:00

I celebrated my 28th birthday much ealier this year with a bunch of my friends and housemate on 17th July 2009. This is because on the 18th, I am going to Penang for 4 days 3 nights trip. This year, Abu and his assistant prepared western food in my house. There is

1. Cordon Bleu Chicken
2. Spaghetti
3. Garlic Bread (This one Keh Wah prepared)
4. Chicken Soup
5. Secret Recipe Cake

There is 8 of us who attend this small celebration and I really enjoy the dinner very much. Thanks to all of them that make it happen that night.

Penang Trip 2009 (Part 3)

2009-07-25T09:52:00.000+08:00

Day 3

Today we woke around 7.15am and reached One Corner Cafe at 8.45am. We ordered the Hokkien Mee aka prawn mee and waited for a freaking 45minute! Mind you it was on Monday morning where there is no public holiday. We drink our coffee until dry (kering kontang) also the mee haven't arrived yet. Alas, around 9.35am, our hokkien mee arrive on our table. True enough, it was the best hokkien mee I ever had in 28 years of living. The soup is sweet and spicy. I believe that they use a lot of prawns and rib bones to cook this soup, that's why the sweetness is all there. Everything is make almost to perfect! It’s really worth the waits!

Today our destination is to Penang Hill aka Bukit Bendera. I wonder why Malay and English name are different. It should be name Flag Hill or Bukit Penang. It took about 20 minute to reach to the top. On top of the Penang Hill, we could see Penang from sky view and its wonderful scenery. The weather is good too considering not as hot as in town. Not windy enough but there is a little chill. There ain’t much thing to do here as there is only a Malay food courts, mosque, an Indian temple, resorts and a small bird park. There is a canopy walk way but closed down due to some fallen tree. Seriously, there is nothing to do here! We spend about 2 and a half hour here. Mostly just relaxed ourselves and photo shooting.

Following The Star book, we went to Kedai Kopi Sin Hwa at opposite of Pulau Tikus police station in Jalan Burma. It's said to be famous among the locals compared to the more popular tourist places for CKT such as Lorong Selamat, Ah Leng and The Sister. The CKT in my humble opinion is a little too dry. It's just a normal CKT. I came to know later from the net that the stall was really good in the past, but the original lady had left and the guy frying the CKT was actually her assistant! No wonder it tastes so normal. We also ordered the said to be famous gulai asam fish and it's another letdown. Not worth mentioning at all.

Next our GPS navigate us to Taman Botanic and we reached there in no time. I really love GPS as it helps us a lot in every single direction in Penang. It's so easy to go anywhere with GPS. Taman Botanic is comparable to FRIM in Kepong.It's also known as the "Waterfall Gardens" because of the cascading waterfall nearby. The original gardens were established in 1884 from an old quarry site. Nothing much around here and the monkey are nowhere to be seen. We just take a stroll along the park and left the place less for than half 45 minutes.

Next we head to Fort Cornwallis which is also a normal sightseeing tourist place. Nothing much around there but just like Melaka A.Fomosa, there is cannon here and there. The star-shaped Fort Cornwallis stands at the place where Francis Light and crew landed on August 11th, 1786 to "take possession" of the island of Penang. Before that the island belonged to the Sultan of Kedah. Anyway both Botanic and Fort Cornwallis are just "been there, done that", kinda thing.

We head back to Tune Hotel around 5.30pm and have a good rest. We only continued our journey at 7.30pm to the famous Gurney Drive. We ordered lots of food for our dinner.

1. Asam Laksa (very nice)
2. Wan Tan Mee (lose to Mlk)
3. Siham (nice and big but lose to Mlk tepi longkang siham)
4. Otak Otak (very very bad!)
5. Chee Cheong Fun (very nice)
6. Rojak (the prawn paste is extremely good)
7. Durian (Best!!!)

After the makan makan, we walk around Gurney Plaza and later had a slice of Durian Cheese cake and Caramel Cake in one and the only one in Penang, Secret Recipe. The cake is considered to be my birthday cake from Daph. We couldn't even finish both slices of the cake. We then relax ourselves at Gurney Drive before heading back to our Tune hotel.

Chef Ak in action - Lotus Soup, Cabbage and Chicken

2009-07-24T07:31:00.000+08:00

While going back from work yesterday evening, I thought to cook soup and so I went to the Minimart pasar near my house and bought Lotus, ground peanut, chicken, cabbage and dried shrimp.
At first my intention is only to cook soup but then decided to cook other dishes as well. My menu today is cabbage with egg, lotus root soup and soy sauce chicken. For the cabbage menu, it was my mum recipe. I called her up to ask for some tips.

Firstly fry the garlic and dried shrimp to fragrance, then pour in the beaten egg and fried until it look dry. Then add in the cabbage and fry until dry. Finally add in salt to taste. I love these dishes very much.

For the chicken, I have no idea so I just fry with garlic and ginger. Add in light and dark soy sauce and a little sesame oil. It tastes a little salty as I add in half tea spoon of salt. Then I took some tauki and mix it together. I call it Soy Sauce Chicken Tauki. Haha.

For the lotus soup, 45 minute of cooking the soup is not sufficient enough to soften the ground peanut and lotus. The taste is there but the lotus and peanut is a little hard. Lastly, I add in tauki into the soup which spoil the original taste. Then i forgotten to peel off the lotus skin.

The result I would say I give a B+ for the cabbage with egg while chicken and lotus soup both get a C. I have learned a lesson today after a few cooking. Never ever simply add in other ingredient to cook as it will lose the original taste.

Penang Trip 2009 (Part 2)

2009-07-23T21:09:00.003+08:00

Day 2

Today we woke up at 8.00am and went for food hunt using The Star's Guide to Malaysian Street Food book. Our target is Super Hokkien Mee at Jalan Rangoon. After locking the satellite position in the GPS, we followed the ‘turn by turn’ direction and reached the place in no time. It seems a little different from what the book had written and when we ask the coffee shop waiter there, she told us that the Super Hokkien Mee has already shifted years ago. OMG, we already ordered the wrong one. It tasted normal and we quickly finished up and rushed to the new place given by the waitress. When we reached there around 9.20am, it's already SOLD OUT. Wow, so early! The new place is in One Corner Cafe at behind Giant (near to Tune Hotel). We vowed to go there early tomorrow morning!

Our destination is Kek Lok Si temple at Jalan Air Hitam. It shouldn't take more than 20min from Tune Hotel but it was Sunday and it happens to be wet market in the morning around that area. We were caught in jam and reached there by 10.10am. There seems to be some renovation here and there in Kek Lok Si. There is even some new section for us to explore. We climb the Pagoda and overheard a conversation between a tour guy with some Caucasian saying that once you started to climb, you need to finish it to the top and not half way. I am not sure what does it indicate. Heck, it's very easy to climb the Pagoda stairs. On top of the Pagoda, it’s breathtaking scenery. We also took the lift alike to the top of Kek Lok Si and we could clearly see a giant statue of Buddha being under construction. It’s very nice to visit here during non public or school holiday. There are not much people around and it's easy to walk. I remembered once I was there during super peak holiday season and it was like bumper to bumper crawl. After nearly 3 hours of walking under hot and tiring day, we came down and had our lunch in a coffee shop nearby.

Coffee shop near Kek Lok Si temple.

1. Asam laksa (Normal)
2. CKT (Normal)

We then let our GPS to navigate us to Reclining Buddha temple (Wat Chayamangkalaram) at Lorong Burma. It’s the 3rd largest reclining sleeping Buddha in South East Asia. We took a few photos there before heading back to Tune hotel. Oh ya, we did stop by Restaurant Ice dan Kacang at Lorong Selamat to have their homemade peanut ice cream which is recommended by The Star book. At Rm1 a scoop, it's dirt cheap. The texture and smoothness of the ice cream are comparable to some branded local market. We were supposed to eat a famous Pasembur at Lorong Swatow but when we reached there we are being told by the local that it had already closed down years ago. We then bought a packet of Pasembur at New Park food court and ate it in our hotel. It’s a little expensive at RM13 a pack but could be shared by 3 persons. We then went back to Tune hotel for a refreshing bath. The main purpose for us to go back to the hotel was the camera is out of batt. We are also kinda out or batt too and need to have a good bath and rest.

After the refreshing rest, we continued our journey to Toy Museum at Tanjong Bungah and reached there by 5.37pm. There is a lot of action figure in this toy museum. I would say it's just an average place to visit as most of the toy displayed in the shelf is like those displayed in shopping mall. It's being reputed as the largest of its kind in the world and this museum house over 100,000 toys, dolls and others fun collectibles. We spend almost 1 and a half hour there taking lots of action figure photo. Then we continued our journey to Batu Ferringhi and reached there at 7.27pm.

We took a stroll along the beach for half an hour and are able to catch sunset on that time. Then we had our dinner in one of a food court at Batu Ferringhi.
Batu Ferringhi Food Court
1. Prawn Seafood Yee Mee (Normal)
2. Hokkien Char (Normal)
3. Ikan Bakar (Better than average)

After dinner, we walk along the night market and Daph bought a paired of sandals. We then travel to Air Hitam following The Star book for Penang best Oh Chien but unfortunately, it was the rest day. According to the book, it stated that the rest day is on Monday but they seem to have moved their rest day to Sunday. So we head back to Tune hotel and call it a day.

Penang Trip 2009 (Part 1)

2009-07-22T19:17:00.002+08:00

Day 1 (18/07/2009)

We started our journey around 8.30am and reached Pun Chun @ Bidor for our breakfast. Ordered their famous herbal duck soup and the swee bao. Yummy as usual! We then continued our journey to Taiping and reached my sister house around 12.30pm. Thanks to the GPS, we found our way to my sister house easily. We took our lunch at Kedai Kopi Prima where we ordered curry mee, popiah, seafood porridge and the famous 'amocana' aka buah kedondong juice. We then continued our journey to Butterworth ferry terminal and reached Georgetown around 4.20pm.

Day 1 (18th July 2009)

This is the second time I took a ferry to Penang Island. The first time was many years ago with my colleague. The ferry price ticket cost us Rm7.70 and duration is about 15min. Gps then navigate us with ease and we reached Tune Hotel in Georgetown at 5.00pm. We took a bath and rest for a while. Surprisingly Tune Hotel is really a great, clean and nice hotel. The only downside is it’s a little cramp. Air cond calculation was like 12H and 24H credit. We bought a 24H credit and a 12H credit. A total hour that the air cond can be use is 36H. We estimated 12H per night use. There is other adds on such as toilette and tower that cost Rm5 but we didn't take it. We only add on hair dryer which cost Rm1 per stay. With the total price of Rm60 per night, it’s a steal. Overall, I would like to give thumbs up for Tune Hotel for the superb strategic location. It’s in center of Georgetown and only about 600m walk to Komtar. Then we walk to New Lane hawker center for our dinner.

New Lane hawker center (outside Sunway hotel)

1. Pork Intestine porridge (Crispy part are nice)
2. Oh Chien (Overkilled price @ Rm10 small plate)
3. Hokkien Mee (So so only)
4. Chicken Wing (Not really nice)
5. Char Kuey Teow (Very good!!)

After our makan makan, we head to Komtar which is only a few meter from New Lane. Komtar, an iconic landmark in Penang but is a very run down building. The place doesn’t look safe during night time. Maybe an upgrading or renovation should be carry out around Komtar. The shop outside Komtar looks like in the 70's. Then we continued walking to Penang Timesquare which is a new shopping complex. It hasn’t been fully open yet. Daph spend me a cone of Swensen mint choco ice cream which tastes very good.

When walking back to Tune hotel, we ta pau (take away) Char Kuey Teow (CKT) at New Lane. We waited for about 30 minutes and had our supper in Tune hotel. All I could say is this New Lane CKT is worth the wait! We slept around 11.30pm as we need to wake up early for our tomorrow full packed schedule.

Chef Ak in action - Fishball Egg Soup

2009-07-16T20:25:00.010+08:00

Today my housemate is cooking dinner and I decided to join in the fun too. I thought to prepare the soup. On the way back from my office, I was thinking what soup should I cook and lastly decided to cook egg soup.

Ingredient for the soup of the day is 3 eggs, a few pieces of chicken chunk, tomatoes, carrot, potato and fishball. Yeah, I know it's a tad over ingredient but the other add in ingredient was a left over in the fridge that need to be cleared off. Normally egg soup should only cook with eggs and chicken chunk. Some fried their eggs first before add in the water but I doesn’t want to cook in that way. Of course if you fry it first, it will taste even better but the soup will ended up a little oily. So instead, I just beat the eggs lightly in the bowl and pour into the boiling water.

How's the outcome like? I love it! I would grade myself a B. My housemate cooks other dishes such as long bean (Okui Tou), dry soy sauce chicken and steam tofu. I couldn't believe I am so into cooking now. But I guess it's usual for me. Hangat hangat tahi ayam as always. Haha

PS: Btw, all photo on my previous cooking was taken with my lauzy 2MP Nokia 7210. Sorry for the low quality photo.

Chef Ak in action - Long Bean Rice

2009-07-14T21:09:00.008+08:00

Here I am to test run my cooking skill again. I was thinking to cook for my housemate and was wondering what type of dishes is simple and easy to cook. Suddenly, I remembered my mum cooked a simple dish for us whenever she is busy. Long Bean Rice aka Chai Tou Fan (Chinese)

So I started to recall what my mum had put-in her long bean rice and how do I cook this dish. I finally came to conclusion that I need long bean obviously, chicken or pork meat chunk, dried shrimp, ginger, pepper, garlic and mushroom. All I need to get from the market when I am back home from work was just the long bean and ready fried onion. I already had the rest of ingredient at home. No pork but I still have left over chicken meat. A simple call to my mum while I was working in the afternoon to ask some tips from her. She told me to fry the long bean and chicken first before putting it into the rice cooker otherwise it might be a little raw for the long bean and chicken.

So I started to fry all the garlic, then add in the chicken chunk. After a while, I simply put in the long bean and boiled mushroom to fry. Lastly I added some light and dark soya sauce as the seasoning. I didn't put in the salt and our food is low sodium base. After cooking for about 10-15 minute, it was being transported into the rice cooker. It was then cook together with the rice. The soup in the other hand is rather simple. Corn (I love corn), tomatoes, chicken meat ball and chicken skin as flavour. Add a small teaspoon of salt and that's all for the soup. Simple isn’t it?

How is the outcome? Well, the soup tastes good to me. As you know, I really love soup so maybe I am a little bias on that. Now come to the main dish, the long bean rice. I would have self grade myself a 'B or B+' if the rice is a little softer. The rice is a little bit hard thus indicated that the water is a little less. I wanted to add in more water on that time but it looks to me that the water is sufficient enough. I wonder is it because of the long bean or some other thing that absorb the water off. My final verdict, I only grade myself a 'B-'.

Again, I felt happy to see that my cooking is fully eaten up by me and my housemate. The satisfaction is there. It's kinda fun to cook and I guess my housemate will continue to be my white mice a little bit longer. *as they are more than willing to*

Chef Ak in action - Chicken Rice

2009-07-07T21:57:00.013+08:00

How could my big mouth challenged somebody that eats like a monster? Loser will have to cook. Yeah, I lost to a monster that can eat like Godzilla. Seriously!

I dun really know how to cook. Not even rice. Normally, it was me and Daph that do the cooking. She will cook the rice and some dishes while I cook the soup. Most of the thing I cook will either end up chau ta (burn out). Soup will never be chau ta and that's why I ‘love’ to cook soup. Lol.

But today, I need to cook for my housemate all alone by myself. A quick check on the net and some tips from Daph, I prepare a few simple dishes.

1. Chicken Rice
2. Steamed Taufu
3. Ngar Choi (bean sprout)
4. Chicken meat ball cook ala tomato sauce
5. ABCDEF Soup.

I took my lunch hour time to go Tesco to get some vege, chicken meat and a whole lot of list. I started to cook around 6.30pm after working today and everything is ready by an hour time. So how was the result?

Well, for my personnel view, I would say the chicken rice is too salty. Maybe that's because I have pour in too much of serbuk pati ayam. The chicken is a little overcook hence a little hard to chew. Others, I would still consider them as acceptable for me. I am not sure about my housemate but they seem to be fine. An hour has passed and so far nobody is being rushed to the hospital yet.

Well, this is my first official chinese dishes cooking. It turnout to be ‘still acceptable’. Although it doesn't taste good, but somehow the satisfaction to see my housemate to sapu it all clean is good. (Though by forcing them to finished up) Haha. If I would to rate A which is excellent and F is Failed, I would rate myself a C+.

My Acer Aspire 4935

2009-06-29T19:00:00.006+08:00

I seriously can't leave without my computer. *Gasp*! Am I that geeky? Old one gone, new one is in da house. Oops, I must rephrase the words saying “Old one gone, new one is in da house IF I am in da house” This time, he will follow me wherever I go. No more letting him staying alone in my house anymore. I went to Low Yat searching hi and lo for my Asus F3F replacement. My mind has set for Acer Timeline 4810T when I saw it in some of the website.

So there we are spending almost a day in Low Yat doing all sorts of analysis, calculating, formula, fishbone chart and etc just to find the right choice. Alas, there are a few listed finalist bases on certain criteria such as price, performance, design, mobility and last but not least, genuine Vista HP. The notebooks that have made it to my finalist are:

1. Acer Timeline 4810T
2. Acer Aspire 4935
3. Acer Aspire 4730z
4. Asus X58
5. Toshiba Satellite L310

I wanted the Timeline badly as the design is damn nice. It's only an inch thick with aluminum exterior. You might wonder how thin is thin? It's like you open up the lid of your normal notebook and that is how Timeline thickness with the lid closes! With the ultra elegance design and overall weight at only 1.9kgs and a battery performance that last up to 8 hours (as advertise), it's everyone dream notebook. (do not compare with pricey Macbook Air)I was so hooked on that lappy that retail at Rm2699 but in the end, I couldn't bare with their ULV Single Core processor. They have a model with ULV Dual Core processor which cost RM3299 which is far fetch for a person that have just lost a notebook! My budget is to get any notebook that cost below RM2.5k. The lower the better. I have been told by the sales person that this Timeline can barely or struggling with CS2. Furthermore to be frank, she told us that Timeline series having some problem with the bios and need to send to Acer to flash bios first. A quick check on Vista Experience index shows that 4810T only score a mere 2.7 which is lower than my 3 years old Asus. It’s seriously for lightweight user only.

After hearing all this problem it’s surely a letdown so we decided to try Asus X58 but compare to Acer 4935, Asus spec is lower and price is more expensive. Toshiba is about the same with Asus which is also lower in spec and price is higher than Acer. So what else can I choose? Surely the only choices now I have are Acer. I dun like Dell design which is too boxy and thick. Acer after launching Gemstone back in 3 years ago, I must admit their design have significantly improved.

So alas ended up buying Acer Aspire 4935. Upgraded to 4GB of DDR2 ram and the total price came to Rm2.4k+. The spec is as below.

Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor T6400
Mobile Intel® GM45 Express Chipset
Intel® Wireless WiFi Link 5100/5300
14" HD 16:9 aspect ratios,
Biometric Fingerprint
Dolby Home Theater
4GB DDR2
320GB HDD
Vista Home Premium

So far I am quite satisfied with the performance of this Acer. Vista Experience index score 3.1 and after upgraded from 2GB to 4GB, the graphic performance increase to 3.7. This is because of the shared memory from X4500MHD up to 1759MB. One thing that I dun like is the bloated bundle software by Acer. I have deleted almost all the useless junk and install useful program such as Klite, Winrar, CS2, AVG, Ccleaner and others. There is a futuristic touch-sensitive interface on the left side of the keyboard which consists of volume slider and other media control stuff. On the dark side, I have heard a lot of Acer user having problem with their computer. Let’s just hope that this Acer will not give me any problem.

Adidas Daroga Trail CC M

2009-06-24T18:47:00.001+08:00

This is a little too old to blog it out now. I bought this Adidas shoe on Saturday, 13th June 2009. I am sure some will ask why another Adidas shoe? The reason I bought this was it is kinda cheap and furthermore there is additional 40% discount. You just need to buy 4 item in Adidas warehouse, Summit and entitled to 40% discount. Fortunately, I met my colleague there and together we combined our item and get the huge discount. It was selling at retail RM160+ and after the discount is about RM96+. It's dirt cheap and furthermore this shoe is very unique. I saw the same shoe and it was selling at RM270 in Adidas outlet, Sunway Pyramid! Wow, what a huge price different. Yes, it’s genuine goods. For your info, I have sold my Adidas Quick Cut as I dun need two pair of shoes.

The uniqueness of this shoe is it was made for hiking. The name Adidas Daroga sounds like some ancient dragon. This shoe is really comfortable and soft. Once I tried on it, I really love it. It's soft, light weight and it just feel very comfortable. It’s like wearing a comfortable soft cushion inside your shoe. You won't even feel hot when wearing it long as there is lots of tiny ventilation mesh at the shoe base. Click here for more info of Adidas Daroga

Well, of course I am not using this shoe for hiking but rather than normal using. It's good for my coming trip to China as it will help to comfort my leg and toes when climbing The Great Wall of China. We will have a lot of walking in China.

Nokia 7210 Supernova

2009-06-23T20:13:00.000+08:00

My previous China mali Iphone is a messed and I am relieved that I have sold it away. Last Saturday, we go to Low Yat with the intention of getting a Nokia 5220. In the Nokia website, it looks promising.

When we reached there and lay our hand on the Nokia 5220, it doesn't look and feel good. It's a little too thick and looks clumsy. We used to hold thin and slim phone such as Nokia 5310. So, we look for other alternate choices like Sony Ericsson, Samsung, and LG. In the end, we still go back to Nokia. After choosing the brand, we hunt for the model. My budget is not more than Rm500 phone. Cheaper the better as I only sell my Iphone for Rm350. Alas, we found the best buck for the phone we want. Nokia 7210 Supernova. Thin and slim, a normal basic phone. It only cost RM400 with 2GB memory card, 18 month warranty and screen protector. Not to mention free two kawaii soft toy. Lulz.

One thing I am a little skeptical about the phone is he said that this one is a Limited Edition Supernova as the colour is all black. Normal one will be either blue/black or red/black. I suspect it's not original casing but anyway, it look better with black casing. This software version is v05.61 and I have flashed it today by my own to v06.51. So far, I didn’t see any different yet.

There is only one problem I faced even after flashing to latest firmware. I can't seem to turn on screensaver for digital clock. It will go completely goes blank eventhough I have put time out. Yup, sleep mode turn off and every possible solution I look in the net also couldn't solve the problem. Maybe when I am free, I might head back to Low Yat and see he will say about this. Overall, this phone is good for me as there is all the basic mobile phone thing, not too fancy looking, small and slim, easy to use and most important cheap.

We was heading home happily when we received a bad bad news from my housemate… Blog

My second hiking in FRIM

2009-06-23T19:07:00.000+08:00

We reached FRIM about 8.10am and park our car outside the road. You need to pay RM2 for parking in FRIM. After all, a morning walk for warm up into the hill will be much better. It's about 30 minute walk before you reached FRIM hill.

We assent the hill around 8.50 am and reached the first station at 9.00 am. It's only about 10 minute up the hill stairs but it's a little tiring. We are out of breath by then. We rested there for a while before we continue ascending the hill again. We reached the peak in another 20 minutes time. It's 1,000 feet’s on the peak. Then we started to decent down for about half an hour and we reached the waterfall which is so cooling and refreshing. We rested and meditate ourself there peacefully for another 30 minutes.

Then we took the right trail which is a longer walking path to our car park. The duration of walking is more than an hour! My toes hurts as I was wear those hiking shoes which are not comfortable on hard flat ground. Looking back on my last trip to FRIM which I said is kinda hard, I am a little relieved to see that on my previous blog, I said that it was kinda hard, super tiring etc. I found out that it's not as hard as I used to say. When compared to Broga Hill and Kampung Sg. Penchala, I would say FRIM is nowhere near it. Comparing Broga Hill to Penchala, definitely Penchala is the toughest hike I have been.

I need to do more training on FRIM first and who knows, one day I might go Bukit Tabur. Anyway, chances to go Bukit Tabur are actually kinda low for me as I am very afraid of height. Eventhough if I have the stamina, I am still afraid of height. Extreme game is a no no for me.

House being broken in!

2009-06-22T20:44:00.000+08:00

Last Saturday, my house was being broken in. I was at Lowyat during that time to get myself a new handphone and was on the way back when my housemate rang me. I was like are you serious? No joke? We rushed back and to my dismay, the thief has taken my belongings…

1. Asus F3F Notebook (near 3 years)
2. Logitech wireless mouse
3. Seiko Titanium watch
4. CK perfume (half bottle)
5. Philips Shaver

Estimation a total of RM4500 losses without calculating depreciation. The loss item can be purchased back but the memories in the notebook are gone forever and ever. I couldn't believe that I didn’t backup all my picture and document. The photos that I have taken in many countries are gone forever now. A hard lesson being learned. I thought I did backup but nope, nothing. I only managed to get a few folders from Daph computer. Sighhh

The thief also took away my housemate digital camera and a PS2. It seems that my losses are the biggest. Shouldn't have kept too much valuable item in my room. Damn sad! The whole house was being ransacked and everything turned upside down. For those who still think that keeping money under the bed is safe, please think twice. They will ransack every single thing in your room. I am also a little lucky that I have passed my China money worth RMB1400 to Daph house. Otherwise, I would have lost more.

We make a report at USJ 8 police station and were being told by Sarjan Azlan there was 4 cases at USJ 12 (my area) on that day itself. He told me this happen because we public people don’t want to cooperate with police. That was very true when he told us that there is victim who saw the thief break into her house as she was hiding in a room. She doesn't know the police station number although she has being staying there for more than 15 years. True enough as I also didn't have the police station number. Then in different cases, some neighbor witness breaks in but didn't want to contact police as they are afraid to give their statement etc.

Well, on the bright side is, everyone is safe and no harm. We are more alert now and have changes our lock pad. We wouldn't dare to imagine what will happen to us if we came back during the thief was still in the house.

Wahhh, Iphone leh!

2009-06-18T19:00:00.000+08:00

It looks exactly like Iphone. The appearance, the beauty, the size, the elegant, everything! It's really a simple and attractive phone. Only one simple button in the middle of the Iphone that control the whole universe, err I mean Iphone. Anyway there the rear show Phone instead of Iphone. I wonder if they purposely left out the 'I' or they just couldn't be bothered. It's the look that counts. At a glance, it is a perfect everybody wants a piece of that phone kinda syndromes but there is only one con. It's china mali Iphone. Nope, it's not made in china Iphone but it's an imitation or fake China Iphone. The outlook of this China mali Iphone deceives many eyes. Nobody knows it is an imitation stuff until.........

Now, let's get into the function of the phone. Someone ask me what kind of China mali Iphone platform base? Heck, I don’t know. It's obviously not Mac OS, not window mobile platform, not symbian, not UIQ or anything. It's just 20cent china base software that is kinda crappy. Nah, it's not a total crappy platform as you still can do some of the Iphone effects. The icon is exactly the same but with different outcome when u tab on the screen. Take for example of GPS icon. When tab on it, it will show you Call History. Now how cool is that. To be able to successfully touch/tab the screen with respond, you seriously need to do it twice or sometime thrice. Then you have those overlapping words on the icon that turnout to be fugly. Try calling someone using this China mali Iphone and chances to have the other parties hear you are kinda low. I was in my room with quiet and peaceful environment but when I make a call to someone, she ask me am I at the Pasar Malam right now? Well, you get the drift. With that kind of unpleasant sound quality, please just ignore the loudspeaker for Christ sake.

Just when you thought that you have heard tones of bad thing, the worse has yet to come. Everybody loves text messaging aka SMS. Well, you need to be really patience when using this tiny puny little touch screen effect. Well, at least it teaches us to stay patient. Searching for phonebook contact is another hassle. Ohhh and on top of this did I mention to you that this China mali Iphone will sometimes play dead? You will be wondering why on earth nobody contacted you while using this cool look China mali Iphone and when u tab on the screen, there is no respond at all. Try your luck by taking the battery out and reinserting it. It might help. Words of advice: Do not use this as alarm for work. Sometime you might get late coming.

Well, after all the above complaint, I would only warp out by saying what you pay is what you get. You pay peanut, you expect a peanut. This is very true. Anyway, I have sold this Iphone last two days. Well, I have told the buyer the same thing but of course not in detail. I just warp up by saying when you pay peanut, you will get peanut. He seems to understand me well enough to make up his own mind. Once paid considered sold. You have been warned.

Tony Roma's

2009-06-17T07:19:00.000+08:00

Last Saturday night, I get to taste the world famous rib, Tony Roma's. Thanks to someone who wanted to buy me a dinner. We were there and was served by an African lady name Farah (If I am not mistaken) who work there as waitress. She is very helpful that night although the restaurant was crowded at that time. We ask her to recommend us another main course besides the well known TR's ribs. In the end, after her suggestion and our own opinion, we ended up ordering TR'S Sampler Ribs and filet mignon steak (medium rare). She was like did you just said medium rare and not medium well? I firmly told her yes, please. Sampler Ribs come with the 4 famous TR's sauce and one by one she teaches us the uniqueness of each sauce ranging from sweetness to spicy. I couldn't remember the name of the sauce though, and the BBQ sauce is goddamn nice. For starter we ordered Onion Ring Loaf and we get a free complimentary bread.

Firstly we were served Onion Ring Loaf which tastes good but the serving portion is kinda big for just 2 of us. Then came our main course which is the steak and the ribs. The steak was cook to medium rare and the chef assistant took initiative to ask us to cut and sample it to see if it's up to our expectation. The juice was flowing into our mouth when we took our first bite. It was very tender and juicy steak. Then into the middle part, the meat colour became reddish and pinkish and it's a little uneasy to go down with. Although it's nice and juicy, when you look at the red bloody meat, your mind started to play trick on you. Haha. This steak itself cost us about RM60 as filet mignon is a small, choice cut from the small end of the tenderloin, the most tender and most expensive cut by weight. It's kinda expensive for us but compare to wagyu or kobe beef which easily cost about Rm200-RM300, it’s just nothing. TR's do serve wagyu beef at the price of RM99.

The TR's Sampler ribs came with 4 TR's famous sauce. Each of the ribs is dip with their sauce and that make it special. The name Sampler could be easily means each of their 4 signature sauce. The rib is very tender and easy to be eaten. The bones are kinda huge and that make us look like Flinstone age. Seriously, their rib taste good.

The bill came to us with a total amount of RM130++. Well, you would think it's not that expensive and all this thanks to Hong Leong credit card. The second main course we ordered is just half of the price. I guess one fine day we could try their wagyu steak for half of the price. It was an enjoyable dinner that night in TR’s Sunway. There is a lot of restaurant that served even better steak. I would say TR's is good choice for us in term of taste and value but of course I haven't tried the best steakhouse around like Prime, Maredo, Jake's etc. I heard you were given choices of ages of the meat up to 200 days, type of beef like Kobe, Agnus, Matsusaka and lot more $$$ beef. I am not sure about you guys, but everyone said that medium rare is the best cooked steak.

PS: Picture taken from the net cause on that time, my camera batt out of juice. Paisehh

Hiking at Broga Hill

2009-06-14T17:18:00.027+08:00

We waited at Giant Puchong around 6.00am and when everyone arrived, we headed to our hiking destination, Broga Hill at Semenyih which is about 40Km from Puchong. We reached there around 7.10am and started our journey at the palm estate trail. After about 10-15 minute walk, we reached rubber tree estate and followed by an ascending forest trail.

There are few places that we stop here and there as we run out of breath. Hmm, I guess we are kinda exhausted. Along the way, there is a lot of tall grass (lalang) that can cut our skin. When reaching to the first peak, the step becomes steeper and it was kinda slippery as the trail is all soil. You need to be extra caution as there isn't anything to grab hold on if you happen to slip.

We finally reached the first peak around 8.00am and we are fully exhausted and tired by that time. Luckily, there are friends who bring a big bottle of 100 Plus as a reward for making it through the first peak. I would have bought it for RM10 per bottle if anyone willing to sell on that time. Haha. The feeling of drinking 100 Plus was priceless. There is Sinis homemade bread to fill our stomach but me and Daph only share a slice of his homemade bread. We dun feel like eating when tired. Paiseh. We rest there for half an hour before me and Daph decided to conquer the second peak.

It was quite a short path but a little steep towards the second peak. Yes, it looks far from the first peak and when your mind is playing trick on you, you see it as kinda far. Furthermore, we are physically tired and out of breath. But a 30min rest at first peak with cold air cleared our tiredness. This second peak is a little hot and it just looks the same as the first one. There is another one which is the third or last peak of Broga Hill. We really wish to go further on but alas we didn't make it as I really felt tired. Need to keep some energy to descend down.

Descending down is a bit dangerous as it's quite steep and slippery. I slipped once during descending and luckily I managed to control before bowling other peoples. We took about half an hour to descent and of course we shot some posing photo to brag out later. Lol! We are supposed to eat a famous Ikan Bakar near this place but the shop hasn’t open for business yet. We should put our pace slower during descending that time. Damn! Ended up eating a nice Laksa Mee, Wan Tan Mee, Chicken Wing, Milo Ice and Ice Lemon Tea. Every food is goddamn nice. I wonder if we are hungry or that food really tastes good.

Overall, Broga Hill is a nice place to hike as it's not very tough. I would say its average for my standard. Sungai Penchala is much tougher than this and FRIM is a little easier than Broga Hill. One thing for sure is we are all very satisfied with this hiking.

Adidas Quick Cut II Low

2009-06-07T22:53:00.010+08:00

Today went to Summit USJ to scout for sport shoes. My previous 3 years old 'Adidas Dragon' went kaput recently. I dun think so that it can still winstand my walking and climbing on this coming trip to Badaling Great Wall. My intention was to look for a cheap comfort sport shoes. We were supposed to go Subang Parade when I saw a banner at Summit saying ‘Mega Sales’ for Bata. So we ended up going Summit instead.

There is a Bata warehouse sales going on. We spotted a good looking Power shoes but there is no size that fits my elephant foot. Then, there is a pretty cheap sneakers but it's too hard inside out to be comfort for a long walking. We even saw an Adidas selling off at 40% but the shoes looks old and a little defective. Some white part of the shoes already started to be a little yellowish. Nope, not my taste.

Then we went to Adidas shop and there is a ‘value buys’ sales. The price is rather cheap I would say. The average price of a pair of Adidas shoes is somewhere around RM150-RM300. I always thought that Adidas shoes cost from RM350 to RM550. Unfortunately, there is no design that strikes my attention in there.

We continued scouting here and there (even went as far as Subang Parade) and finally we went into Hoop Station at Summit. The name is Adidas Quick Cut II Low (man, the name is kinda awkward and tedious to be read and say) and it looks great or should I say my cup of tea? Price was Rm199. Alas, after a long long pondering, thinking, analysis, and the final decision of getting that damn shoes overcome my logic financial thinking. Lol. My initial plan was only getting a sport shoes that cost somewhere RM50. I hope that these shoes can serve me at least for 5 years and more.

PS: To identified 'fake' product, there is 3 tips

1. Genuine Adidas shoes have different serial numbers on each shoe
2. Genuine shoes don’t have signs of “heel tags”
3. The workmanship especially on the glue part is very lousy

April OTT @ Andalas Corner, Klang

2009-05-06T19:29:00.000+08:00

We convoy with about 20 cars from Damansara to Klang for this OTT. This is my first OTT since last year October. The last OTT I missed out was during March OTT. That time, dun feel like going mah..

This time was held in Andalas Corner in Klang. Quite a nice place I would say but a little too far. It was the same OTT like before. This time, there is a small quiz being carried out by new committee member in TC. There is even a competition for car decoration etc. It's a little effort done by the new committee. Hopefully, there will be more exciting OTT coming on that can pull me to attend this OTT again.

Enjoy some of the photo taken durint this OTT.

Panic, fear, scared, exciting, mix reaction...

2009-04-21T22:07:00.012+08:00

It was very noisy in the production floor and I was like WTH? Are they fighting or something? I am on my way walking to the production floor and when I opened the door, smoke all around. I could see fire in the thick smoke and I was like 'Holy Cow, the factory is on fire!!’. I was alone in the office at that time as one of my clerks went to washroom and other are in the production floor. I quickly dashed out to the guard house and took the fire extinguisher and thought of putting off the fire. Went I reached; I could now see clearly what is on fire. It was a forklift instead. It’s just outside the office door. The fire are big, tall and fierce and I was like 'hell no'. Will it explode? The courage of fighting the fire went down to zero and I make a cowardly U turn. Lol.

I ran back to the guard house and this time there is quite a lot of employee are there safely. Somehow, I couldn't see some of my colleague. I need to run into the production floor to see if they are trap inside I thought. When I went in, I saw a handful of them still inside the factory 'looking and enjoying' the scenery from afar. WTF? O_o

Ordered all of them to get out from the factory as it might be dangerous if the fire reaches the roof. The smell of burning gas is horrible too. A few of my colleague has contacted the fire brigade. Waited for the fire brigade and alas they arrived in 20+ minute when they should have reached at 5-10 minute max. Mind you, the fire station is only about 5 minute from my factory!

The fireman successfully put off the fire and everything is back to normal. Luckily, no one is injured. Only a single forklift is damage. Really thank God that the forklift doesn't blow up near electrical or highly flammable area. Otherwise it will be a hell big mess. Make a report at police station and later at fire station for insurance claim purposes.

We managed to playback during the fire incident as there is 2 CCTV that recorded what had happen before they shut off the main power for safety purposes. We could see clearly our production exec was driving the forklift before it catches fire. He quickly jumps off and straight dashed to the nearest fire extinguisher trying to put off the fire but failed. He then run to get another fire extinguisher and return with a Myanmar worker and QA exec trying to put off the fire. This time, 3 fire extinguishers to put down the fire but it don’t work as well. The fire is getting bigger and wilder and they ran for their life. It was left burning there until the fire brigade came. Anyway, it is a brave move for those who really help trying to put off the fire. Bravo to them. They did a good job although they failed to put off the fire. It's nice to know that some of the worker actually does care.

Here is some of the picture. Only this 2 I will post as I doesn't want to disclose much as it concern my company.

Btw, I learned something valuable from the Fireman. He told us that do not afraid next time to put off the fire on the gas cylinder as it won't explode as the gas already burning. The fire already have source to burn so it won't goes off exploding. It will only explode if there is fire around the gas cylinder and when it's too hot, the gas inside the cylinder will explode.

New Sport Rim!!

2009-03-23T19:01:00.002+08:00

Yesterday afternoon we make our way to Hin Leong at Jalan Kapar in Klang without GPS. GPS unit having some problem and have been sent to repair under warranty. Use my 6 cent in the pocket and reached there in no time.

We went there with the intention just to change tires. Of course I would wan to change my stock rim to nicer sport rim la but budget really concern. We were there at Hing Leong and the mechanic said can trade in my old tires for Rm130. So I ask how about my stock rim and he is willing to take it for Rm400. Wow, Rm530 total. I was expecting something like RM200- Rm300 only for my old rim and tires. New sport rim straight planted in my heart and mind liau. No escape liau this time. Lol.

We had a hard time to choose the rim as there is wide variety of rim at Hin Leong. I love Lenso Samurai rim and I wan finding a replica there. None came close with Lenso Samurai replica. So we choose 3 design and tested on my ride. One of the rims we both agreed and another one she agreed only. That rim I just ask the guy to test to 'eng chau' her only. Alas after comparing 3 of the rim, the 'eng chau' rim surprisingly look the best on my ride. Lol. So there she is blah blah *action maut* with her 'good' taste. Gotta agree she has the taste. Haha. It’s a 15” rim with 16 spokes with Hyperblack colour. Very nice design indeed! Wanted to go for 16” but the price is too expensive and not to mention the tires price too.

We discussed the price again and we go to trade in the old stock rim for Rm550. The Taiwan rim cost Rm760. So I need to top up additional Rm200 for the rim. Of course tire is price is different la. I choose Falken 912 over Michelin PP2. RM165 VS Rm210. Shah Alam gave me best price for Falken 912 Rm185. Hin Leong Kapar only RM165. The price is so cheap compare to elsewhere I have enquiry. Jalan Kapar here sells the cheapest tire you can ever get. A lot of good review for Falken 912 195/55/15 and PP2. Alas, best value for money is still Falken. Total spend is Rm900 with tires.

After bought the new shoes, straight drive to my favorite Meguiar shop for car washing. Then we head home damn satisfied with our new shiny shoes.

Added at 7.30pm

Bought special lock nut for the rim too. Match it very well with Hyperblack colour. Did alignment too.

Stomach upset aka Ohh aliku.

2009-03-16T21:31:00.003+08:00

This is the words I heard when they use to describe labur maut mautan. Ohh aliku or something like that la. Why aliku? I dunno lor. Maybe it's related to Nash or Guile in SF. Cirit birit this few days liau. Today went to see doctor take MC.

So what's up with me this few days? Well, nothing particular. Watch some stupid movie like Chun Li and Dragon Ball in cinema. I knew it will be a mess but somehow, I still wanna watch how bad it was. Not worth mentioning at all. Lol.

What did I do today? I will say sleep + makan + drama. Yup, I am watching The Gem of Life now. Finished Moonlight Resonance last month.

Get a life? Yeah, chowing now to get my life.. >_>

China Trip coming soon!

2009-02-24T15:55:00.003+08:00

I will be heading to Tianjin in 19th of July 2009. I got the air ticket as my valentine and birthday gift from Daph. I guess it cost about Rm600 per ticket. Thanks to her, we will be heading there in July. There is a lot thing to be research and check for this 8 days trip. Here is my draft plan.

19th July 2009 – Sunday – Day 1 – Arrival in Tianjin / Beijing
20th July 2009 – Monday – Day 2 – Beijing to Suzhou in Train
21st July 2009 – Tuesday – Day 3 – Suzhou / Hangzhou
22nd July 2009 – Wednesday – Day 4 – Hangzhou
23rd July 2009 – Thursday – Day 5 – Shanghai
24th July 2009 – Friday – Day 6 - Shanghai to Tianjin in Train
25th July 2009 – Saturday – Day 7 – Tianjin
26th July 2009 – Sunday – Day 8 – KL

In Beijing, I will be going to
1. Badaling Great Wall
2. Forbidden City
3. Tiananmen
4. Summer Palace
5. Temple of Heaven

In Hangzhou, I will be going to
1. West Lake
2. Lingyin Temple
3. Fei Lai Feng
4. Six Harmonies of Pagoda (Liu He)

The rest will be Zhouzhuang at Suzhou which is one of the most famous water townships in China and Shanghai. I will be staying a day in one of my friend house in Shanghai and will visit Wai Tan, Nanjing road and Huai Hai road before heading back to Tianjin.

Too rushed on all this 8 days right? Yes, some of my friends commented that my schedule will be very packed and indeed I agreed with them. Sometime thing won’t goes as smoothly as what I have plan. But so far, of all the trip that I plan in my previous trip is still manageable. Wish me luck! Let’s just see what I can accomplished when the day come.
I really can’t wait for the day to come. There is still 144 days to go. Damn, time sure move very slowly when we are waiting for something isn’t it?