Colors of India: On The Road

The boss was off for his very much anticipated Sandakphu-Phalut trekking in Darjeeling, India. All in all, the journey took more than 10 days including the overnight transit in KL, the stay in Kolkata city pre and post trekking in Darjeeling, India. The boss was scheduled to return to KL on the 10th Nov 2011, before catching a flight home to Sdk on the 12^th Nov 2011 evening. We managed to catch up with each other from time to time with the boss’ newly acquired India cell number. Thus, I was sort of roughly aware of his itinerary but there was one thing he deliberately kept away from me. Not until the Saturday night, when he was about to catch a flight from KL-Sdk. He dropped me a text that night from the airport asking if I have any tasks for Sunday School on the following day, or shall I have any errands to be carried out on that day to which my answer is no. That certainly arouses me to quickly reply and ask if he was scheduled to come over to KK that night :P. To my expectation, well, he said ‘Nope, I am returning to Sdk’. Not until few texts down our conversations, the boss replied ‘But pity someone who has to fly over to KK again tomorrow morning’. I definitely need not to elaborate how did I feel. LOL. By the way, that’s very very t-p(cal) of him! :P

So, fast forward to the boss’ November’s spot-check entry on the following day (131111). We did the normal stuff from eating, eating and more eating as well as some shopping apart from lazing while letting the boss to do all of the talking. I made him talk and talk about his trip and trekking journey along with the photos he took from his camera; which was indeed a rare sight to someone who let me to do most of the talking all the time :P So, here’s a snippet on some random photos on what can be found on the road in Kolkata, to which i find interesting. I’ll leave the honour to the boss to go round with his itinerary journal in his figurines and scale modeling oriented blog :)

Kolkata city is formerly known as Calcutta, is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal.  The city is also aliases as ‘Cultural Capital of India’, ‘The city of Processions’, ‘City of Joy’ and so forth. Picture 1 from left to right:  If you were born in the 80s era, you would probably be very well versed with Dr. Bombay’s famous song ‘Calcutta Taxi’ which was a hit when I was in my early teenage. I remembered the whole class can hum away with ‘Calcutta, taxi taxi taxi in Calcutta’ almost whole day long. :) When I did my research a while ago, I have just discovered that the singer, Dr. Bombay was not an Indian in person. Jonny Jakobsen (famously known as Dr. Bombay) begun his career as a country artist, but was famous only after his metamorphosis into Dr. Bombay. So, this is the authentic Calcutta's taxi ;) Picture 2: Another type of taxi in the form of van apart from Kolkata’s trade-mark taxi. This is better known as mini bus in our country. 

Picture 3: I first came to know about what trams are only in uni during my Highway and Transport subject. In my definition, trams are literally train on asphalt road :P From some of the websites I visited, I learnt that this transport evolution debuted with horse-drawn trams as early as 1881 and subsequently evolved into steam tramway in 1882 and eventually into electric trams that India has to offer today. The Kolkata tram is the oldest operating electric tram in Asia, running since 1902. Tram lends Kolkata an old world charm and add to the romantic element of the city. This slow moving, electrical transport in narrow and crowded streets, completes the ultimate attraction of the city. Having glided down the rails as a historian witness, tram has itself been turned into an immemorial heritage, of which all Kolkatans are proud of (via).

Picture 4: A typical looking 4x4 jeep like what we have in Malaysia. But, what made my jaws dropped was the fact that this jeep can actually engorged up to 14 adults there!. This jeep ferried 10 trekkers in a group along with 4 porters tagging along for more than an hour  or so ride from Darjeeling to the site *roll eyes* :) Picture 5 & 6: An auto rickshaw (i.e tuk-tuk, baby taxi) and the conventional runner pulled one, respectively. It’s almost unbelievable to find such traditional lifestyle in the latter still exists amidst the modern transportation technology in the country. Talking about rich culture, valuable history, I think Kolkata had it all. From all the photos can be found in the boss’ memory card, I think I can also safely assume that the city is also animal-friendly :). Picture 7: A living stallion probably has lost his way standing in the middle of the road, somehow do look like a statue in a roundabout. If you squint hard enough, you'll see public buses in the background. Picture 8: The picture may not do its justice. There was a tribe of more than a hundred of goats by the roadside.

Enchanting Vienna

For the second time in 10 years (first was back in 2002), the world renowned Vienna Boys Choir was in Sabah, courtesy of Rotary Club Kota Kinabalu who spent literally two full years in order to make this rare event to happen. Besides bringing one of the world’s best to Sabah, one of the main objectives were to raise funds for the dialysis project that the Rotary Club is organizing, more particularly the International Polio Plus, avoidable blindness as well as the community gravity water project. (Excerpted from Daily Express, our local dailies). 

The Vienna Boys’ Choir, originated more than half a century ago, sang exclusively for the court, at mass, at private concerts and functions and on state occasions in Vienna until the 1920s. Due to insufficient funding after the end of the monarchy, the Vienna Boys Choir was privatized in 1921 and started to give concerts outside of the chapel which immediately turned out to be a great success. Since the 1920s, the choir has collected all kinds of different music styles on its travels (via). The inarguably the oldest and best known boys' choir in the world and was on stage here in Kota Kinabalu on the 29^th and 30^th October 2011 at Sutera harbor Resort and Chancellor Hall (UMS), respectively. We opted for our tickets on the latter. It feels so good to be able to go back to the uni again :). Tickets were ranging from RM250, RM100 and RM50 for the show in UMS. 

The boys are selected from all over the world, China, Australia, Singapore, Japan, Europe, Germany as well as Canada with a total of 25 boys aged between 9 and 13, turning to 10 and 14 based in Vienna in a boarding school. Today, there are around 100 choristers between the ages of 10 to 14 which are divided into four touring choirs. The four touring choirs (by the name Bruckner, Haydan, Mozart and Schubert) are performing around 300 concerts every year. They visit virtually all European countries, and they are frequent guests in Asia, Australia and the Americas. The choir's repertoire includes everything from medieval over classical to contemporary and experimental music as well as children’s operas.

One thing that captured my attention (excerpted from the daily) on a press conference between Daily Express and the boy’s choir 32 years old conductor was that; at the boys’ age as young as 9 (to 13) as a touring group at the same time studying in a boarding school, when do they actually go to school? According to Kerem (the conductor), there were 3 semester in a year whereby the first one is the touring semester. The second and third one will be from January to March, and April to June respectively. They go to school in the morning for four hours and two hours of rehearsal, mid break, lunch break and resume with schooling from 2.30pm to 6pm before dinner and leisure time.

He added, since the boys will be touring 2-3 months in a year, by singing for all big presidents and prime ministers, holding press conferences worldwide, speaking to waiters asking for a fork, meeting fans singing for autographs and taking pictures are also a form of education, which I couldn’t agree more :).

Throughout the performances, photographs and video-taping were strictly prohibited and everyone as far as I can see seemed to adhere to the regulations. Thus, I was a little disappointed that time as I was practically geared up with all-formatted memory cards, summing to a total of 25 GB from both DSLR and compact in all but I didn't muster up enough courage to whip out my camera at all :P.

The night started promptly at 2000hr sharp with a short customary speech by the Rotarian representative and brief introduction about Vienna Boys Choir by the conductor. The choir, which went by the theme "Enchanting Vienna" making a debut with Ach, Lieb, ich muss dich lassen (My darling, I must leave you). The performances promptly followed on and lasted for about an hour or so before taking a short intermission before resuming with the second half of the program. Most of the songs were presented in French and Italian. Thanks to the booklet we were asked to buy for RM2 each (in buy one free one basis), which comprised a complete compilations of the songs presented along with English translation. Throughout the performance, there were barely any pause or brief introduction between each songs, thus we could hardly trace where which song were we in until the 10^th song which was carried out in English with a frequent repetition of ‘Moses, Moses’, which was also its title :P

Since there were two empty seats on my left, a brother in Christ who was about the age of the boss, also a close friend of ours who came for the performance alone joined us during the interval and was seated next to me through the second half. I finally whipped out my camera thinking that I have someone big whom I can count-on covering me on the sideway when I start snapping and video-ing away. Funny thing was that the first sentence he asked was ‘why are you guys bringing so many cameras?’ (little did we know that photography were prohibited earlier) and the sentence he repeatedly mentioned was ‘don’t put on your flash’ and went on ‘else, we’ll both be caught’. LOL. So, I kept it minimal with the aid of the shawl I brought along :P. 

The choir infixed a couple of Chinese songs by the title “Bang Chhun-hong” (Longing for the spring breeze) in Taiwanese Hokkien and “Xiang Jia Le” in Mandarin. The crowd was very much livened up when the choir ended up the performance with a famous local song, Gunung Kinabalu; which was not included in their repertoire earlier. We were told that the songs were practiced in a mere span of two days. Audiences were clapping along in glee and started to sing along. We were allowed to have our photos taken with the choristers but we gave that a miss because we didn’t want to be caught in the post-performance congestion (both traffic and human) :P

Personally, I was very impressed with the all the boys that they manage to memorize what seemed to me to be a rather long speech with very minimal referring to the notes (only for a few number of songs). Not to mention, am utterly amazed with the angelic voices they had. They seriously deserved a pat on their back for putting up a really good show and it was an enchanting Viennese evening indeed :)

Little Darlings

It had been quite some time since I last made konnyaku jelly. It was because it requires high meticulous effort with my previous moulds. I have quite a collection of trays/pans for jellies but have never been really happy with them. Some were either too small in size. I have to pop in two cubes into my mouth to get the satisfaction (read: gluttony) out of it and down through my throat within a couple time of chewing, a couple of trays have narrow bottom and the jelly were unable to penetrate thoroughly to the bottom after small fruit cubes were placed, those mould with silicone push-able bottom somehow yielded a plasticy-stink (despite soaking it with water overnight). I have only used them once, prolly the stink will diminish after a couple of usage but I don’t think I’ll be using them anymore for this purpose.

But, I am one happy konnyaku-maker now and am so glad that I have finally found the purr-fect mould (I just can't love them enough!). I have been seeing almost everyone (literally) using this kind of mould but have never took the effort to search nor ask around for it. I am so pleased with the reasonable size for each jelly. I stumbled upon them by chance from the bake shop nearby my house (which only operates during weekday office hour) during one my impromptu trip to a bookstore which is located at the same row :).

I regained my mojo for konnyaku making and pronto fetch home a packet of local strawberries when we were dining at the nearby restaurant few nights after that (Not easy, I only know one store selling these fruit on a constant basis throughout our humble city). Personally, I would always prefer a fresh approach rather than having canned fruits for its filling. I am one hardcore fan of strawberries. How I wish I could grow these little darlings right at my own yard :P The sour-ish taste resulted from the berries complement so well with the sweetness of the mango-flavored konnyaku =). 

Sushi Bonanza

The first quarter of December is almost down, but I still have one, perhaps two or maybe three posts more to be covered before calling it a year (Nah, I wish so too!). I am still slowly crawling from the beginning of October 2011. This post is meant to pen down the boss’ visit in October 2011. A very typical dining spot, but for this round the boss’ work call visit this round coincides with the Sushi King’s RM2 Bonanza :) It was our very first time patronizing Sushi King during their bonanza fair. 

The both of us had 9 plates of sushi(s) in total and that made me a full stomach bliss. On top of that, we shared a set of Yakiniku Bento before leaving with our cup runneth over :P So, these are among the salvable limited number of sushi photos.  Clockwise from top left are ebi ten (prawn tempura), unagi (grilled eel) slice, chicken cheese roll, salmon sushi, chukka lidako (seasoned baby octopus) and fry roll. Among the photos cannot be retrieved after recovery were chukka kurage (seasoned jelly fish), tsubukko (fish roe) and Yakiniku (pan fried beef) Bento.  

With this, I am hoping to close down the blur prawn-headness syndrome in me *bummer*. To top that up, I have been practicing to double back-up my photos and not to mention, my 500GB external HDD is almost full in no time now, and I am depending solely on my 500GB hard disc size in my lappy. Time to invest for a new external HDD. Let’s hope that there’ll be no more whining nor crying over split milk. More on this day in future posts :)

September’s spot-check

On the tail end September, the boss was here again but this round he traveled by road together with a colleague for a field trip in the mid-west-coast. Since the work calls for his itinerary on the first day, he intended to make this trip as a secretive one, to which he spared the following day a spot-check :). But, the night before he left, on a very casual video call conversation, I casually asked what he was doing a moment ago before retiring to bed. As usual, he would usually deliberately name those basic to-do-lists to me from bathing to prayer. This time, I smell something fishy. LOL. I dug and probed further, finally he gave in and reluctantly revealed that he is doing some packing and will be coming over the following day and initially wanted to keep this as a surprise. This boss of mine is full with little surprises from time to time, and I have been sorta complaining for not being able to make preparation (in fact there is nothing to be prepared, apart from getting myself up in the morning and get out of the house. Somehow, still needs some planning though) but I secretly appreciate them all :)

It was a rather short and task-ful outing this round, and also the first time I spent time running errands with him and meeting his colleague. Early in the morning, I met up the boss and his colleague came over and picked us up and off we went for a dim sum affair. Thereafter, he dropped us off to the Inland Revenue Board as the boss had to get some issues sorted out. Everything went smoothly and sooner than we have expected, in less than an hour time. After that, we walked over to Karamunsing, which was only located across the busy highway. He was sourcing for money changer doing Indian rupees then but to no avail. When we stumbled upon a cobbler kiosk at the basement level, the boss decided to get his hiking boots, also the only footwear he brought over to be repaired for RM30. We were required to wait for 30 minutes, which eventually done in 45 minutes. In fact, I took a number of photos of the boss’ feet on the loaned sandal, owned by the cobbler guy with his socks on. A funny sight but unfortunately, it was accidentally deleted along with the rest of the photos :(. 

These were the only photos I was able to recover. The boss inside the Revenue Inland Board office while lugging his camera, a range of different sizes of plastic shoe trees at the cobbler’s kiosk in Karamunsing Complex, Karamunsing’s food court’s Teh-C Special (dual-layer instead of the usual three) and Sjora mango peach juice, pastry with mushroom and chicken filling (the filling tasted alike to Pizza Hut’s Hawaiian Chicken’s topping minus the pineapple) in Tg. Aru. 

From Karamunsing, we walked over to Asia City. Upon touching Asia City, we decided to hunt for lunch despite being still very full after the late breakfast. Thus, we decided to stroll around and the boss asked where I would like to go. I casually answered Centre Point. He further asked me if I have anything specific in mind to look for, and to which my answer is no except for some window shopping. While getting across the road, I was led to another side instead. I can’t help but asking where are we heading. The boss was non-chalantly replied ‘Centre Point lor’ and we eventually landed in a jewelry shop in Kg. Air. For the first few minutes, I was strolling along the pathway and looking at their beautiful jade pendants through the glass from outside while the boss went in, thinking that he would want to check on the prices for gold as he had been mentioning about gold investment sometime ago.

Until the boss called me in and asked me to choose a gold band design that I favor and asking the shopkeeper to get the right size for me, very much to my utter shock! Before I was able decipher their conversation, the guy handed us several designs which he thinks suited our size. I didn’t know why I was so nervous and I don’t remember how did I react or what have I said. Lol. This boss of mine was determined to pay them right away until when dad called me up saying that he has to pick me up a little earlier that afternoon before picking up my mom from her office to collect one of our car which had been sent for service which was ready for collection, as to avoid the heavy congestion later. Yes, the congestion level from the city back to our home is usually horrendous! I quickly intercepted the boss and excused ourselves by telling the guy ‘we’ll be back some other day’ :P. I have been contemplating whether to jot this down, but I simply wanted to mark it down before age catches up on me :) The boss then offered dad to pick up our car instead going all the way to pick mom up and that saved us one trip of congestion all the way to mom’s office :). 

Supper Comfort

I am one procrastinator who keep things update by when the milk has churned into butter. By the way, I have never thought of blogging about this, after patronizing the eatery since donkey years ago; not until the other day, when my brother was home for one week in conjunction of Deepavali hols (and is home again now for semester break) we were there for every one day interval for the whole week!. And, only during our last visit there, I have just discovered the name of the shop :P.

Our family had accustomed to unhealthy habit by taking heavy supper quiet regularly. One of our favorite supper spot is Kheng Hin Coffee Shop in Foh Sang. We used to patronized this eatery for at least once in a week without getting cloyed and the best part of it was it is in its midst of peak hour when we were there close to 10 or 11pm, the time we usually have our supper comfort. At least, we don’t witness empty tables all around, with kitchen helpers cleaning up and getting ready to call it a day of work and the roller shutter were pulled slightly down at such hour :)  This eatery is typically packed every evening/night up to wee hours in the morning.  

These are the repetitive food we ordered almost all the time without getting tired. Our all time claypot seafood porridge order. A steaming hot bowl of hot porridge boiled to a smooth and thick consistency with generous amount of seafood consisting a halved-sized crab, prawns, fish chunks, in addition of seaweeds topping and a handful of spring onions. Heavenly! :)  

A warm and tantalizing bowl of sau yuk (i.e roasted pork) or sang yuk (fresh pork tossed in thick sweet soy sauce gravy) kon lau mee are certainly a welcoming deal before calling it a day. A dash of sesame oil along with their signature chili helps adding flavor to it, certainly a perfect combination one cannot miss :).  

Look at the bowl of roasted pork kon lou mee. Such simple ingredients but absolutely divine! Just looking at it makes my mouth water :P 

Stuffed eggplant and tofu garnished and delished up by golden brown pork lard, very much to my papa’s tastebud :)

And, a plate of 10 pieces of fried dumplings are usually enough (on top of above) to make us satisfyingly full to the brim before hitting the sack and wrapping up the day :). 

Life is Just A Bowl of Cherries

Life is just a bowl of cherries; sometimes it’s afraid filled with worries. Don’t be afraid, when things go wrong, just be strong. When things seem up in the air, and everything is so unfair, and you stumble and fall, just pick up yourself and sing. If one day you lose your way, just remember one thing my friend. When you’re under a cloud, just visit music and sing. If one day you lose your way, just remember that I’m here to stay, don’t you give up and keepyour chin up. And be happy! (borrowed by the lyrics of a beautiful song, Happy by Mocca). This song has been and still one of my favorite and was once my phone’s ringtone for a long period of time :).

We have two cherry trees (i.e Commersonia bartramia) standing gracefully in our mini garden (or yard). For so many years down the road, I hardly recall the time when I last savored the fruits. One thing was that the soil covered by the canopy of the tree has aborted our turf from growing well and is a little sloppy especially after downpour, thus it was a little uncomfortable to be walked on. Second thing was also the main reason; there are a number of regular beautiful birds coming in pairs frolicking around the trees daily. They can literally finish up the whole tree all by themselves :)

My mom, as usual loves to spend her quality time on last Saturday morning (121111) in our  yard after marketing and came into the house with a handful of fully ripened cherries. Most of the time, we could only chance upon almost-ripen fruit, which are still in green with yellowish/pinkish hue yet edible and tasted as good (but not as sweet). I squirmed in delight the moment I saw a small bowl of cherries on the coffee table and unbelievingly asked her ‘Wao, how did you managed that?’  My mom answered, ‘the early birds get the worm’ (i.e cherries in this case), and added ‘to supersede the birds from getting the worm, you have to wake up surprisingly early!’ LOL

Perching on a Ladle

I have a thing for insect, but not all kind of insects. Cockroaches are definitely the first to be stroked out of the list.  I am always attracted to them but unfortunately, I know the name (in layman’s) only for some common ones. Here’s a grasshopper alighting on a ladle inside the utensil holder in our kitchen (081111). I just found out that there are 18,000 kinds of different grasshoppers in the world. So, this is certainly one of the 18k :) Many years back, when we have just moved into our current neighborhood, we can easily chanced upon rare and beautiful insects perching by inside the house. Prolly they were seeking refuge after the vast lush greenery had been chopped down for development.

I recollect vividly that I can easily catch up to 5 reasonably sized insects in one evening to be brought over to school the following day for Science subject when I was in my lower secondary. I was schooling in the afternoon session then, and I remembered of checking on them from time to time that morning at my nanny’s place. I was so pleased when they were still alive inside a plastic container with some breathing holes and few strands of grass inside the moment I reached the school. These days, we can still enjoy these little friends of God’s creation but no longer as often. The last time I saw one was penned down here :).

Mr. Teddy

I may be a jigsaw puzzle girl. Give me a set of 2D puzzles comprising of thousands of tiny weeny pieces, I wouldn’t mind sitting on the working desk hours after another. But, I am a real noobie when it comes to a 3D puzzle. This is my maiden masterpiece, and boy, it wasn’t easy at all when I first laid my hands on it. But, once you get the hang out of it, you will L.U.R.V.E it and this is not that hard afterall, this I assure you :) On one of our outing, the boss stumbled upon and decided to get the 3-d green apple that comes in 44 pieces, to which he already had a red apple earlier from Play n Learn. He gotten another one for me, so that I have at least something new to keep me busy apart from the lappy and mr. telly, according to him. 

This 3D teddy puzzles set came with 41 separate pieces of a set and was supposed to be an 1.5hr challenge. I spent my first hour on the first night dismantling the components and managed to joint 4 pieces of them. Yes, 4 pathetic pieces :). Comes the second day, I spent 2 hours while watching the telly just in getting around with the no.4 element. Going over and over again, I suspected no.4 was not placed correctly, despite it was intact perfectly because I couldn't figure out the subsequent piece.

I was getting a little impatient when I started to gather and recount all the components. All my calculation ended up with either 39 or 40, never 41 as stated on the box packaging. I started to belief that the missing part could be the subsequent piece. Boy oh boy, I was panicked and yes, a little upset too but I was pretty sure that I have taken the highest pre-caution when I was dismantling it on the bed despite with my eyes half-opened the night before. Still, I went to my bed, fluttered my blanket, checking inside of my pillow, side desk, under the bed as well as the narrowest part near to the headboard. So, there goes my two-hours without progress except for two episodes of Chinese drama series. 

On the third day, I was determined to finish the whole thing up and was mentally prepared shall there be any missing element, I will make do with anything plastic-ey and let painting do wonders. I sat down and went round with it, rotating the teddy’s two legs around, trying to squint my eyes as much as I could to scrutinize the groove of each and every element, one by one, over and over again. I finally proceeded and managed to slowly fix one piece, and slowly proceeded to another. I was pleased and was determined to finish up the whole thing the same night (read: morning) and I finally managed it with a faster pace and voila! My 3-d teddy was done the next hour, without a single missing element. The missing piece(s) remained a mystery. Lol, I am not sure if the packaging was written wrongly, or they included the stickers (for the eyes and nose) to come out as 41 components or blame it to my lousy numbers :P

If you squint hard enough, you'll notice that teddy's right ear wasn't intact properly. It was wobbly when I fixed it into its designated space, thus I twist it a little backwards in order to keep it intact for the time being as I ran out of uhu-glue :). Looks like ear-twisting is an art to learn too :P I am always inspired by many little things around me. Even the littlest thing in life worth noting and they can be the reason to celebrate. This time, I am again inspired. La-di-da-di-daa :D On a side note, today marks 111111, the triple convergence of the 11 is a once-in-a-century cycle :)

Quiet Week Ahead

Finally, the quiet week has arrived. Earlier, I have been a little apprehensive towards the boss’ trip to India; mostly of safety wise especially for the trekking part :). I thought it would be an all-quiet week ahead until his return to Malaysia in more than a week time. But, I was delighted when I received a text message from for few days now with a new India cell number, to which the boss had subscribed the following day upon touching down Kolkatta, which I nearly deleted at the first place, having the thought of advertorial messages or fraudulent messages until I spotted the very familiar first line of greetings prompted the moment I unlock my phone :). The boss touched down Kolkatta city last Tuesday, boarding another flight to Darjeeling the following day, and will be going for the mount trekking early this morning.  So, that spells a quiet week ahead for me, just making do with text messages (provided if his phone battery can last throughout the trekking, which may be taking a few days time) and leave alone the normal dose of thrice daily speech therapy and forget about video calls too! :P.

Last week had been an eventful one (read: busy). My brother was home for one week in conjunction of Deepavali hols. Like usual, the whole family hardly get home before midnight clock strikes, with similar round of activities and savoring repetitious food yet they were equally fun and yummy :) Shame to admit that, there were a couple of non-consecutive nights where we have neglected or too tired (plus l-a-z-y!) to prepare proper meals for our poor doggies. Poor fellas, on those days, my very Asian doggies had to make do with plain bread with planta spread and milk (they do love milk), and sometimes with two hard boiled eggs each :P.  

As for me, I have few more sets of more coloring task to be taken care of, and I finally get all my memory cards for double back-up and formatted (which I have never did for once). Thanks to Vienna Boys Choir, the musical performance we were attending, I finally took the effort to empty and formatted a total of about 25GB of space from our DSLR as well as compact camera. But, unfortunately we weren't allowed to take any videos or photographs when performances were on going. 

Oh yeah, we ushered into November with a nasty news, where a collision occurred between KK train with a fuel tanker on the last day of October. We were aware of the thick dark smoke in the air while were on our way home and little did we expect such a mishap took place. My mom was panic-striken as a number of her colleagues were going up the public transport to and fro daily. Thank God, we were eternally grateful and it was such a relief to hear that no casualty reported. Below are the photos we took (dad and I) the following day, sometime around noon. There were a massive congestion where we were stucked in the short section for more than 40 minutes, due to the massive towing vehicles and enormous crane parking by the roadside.

Done with my long-winded post. Today is the birthday of my junior and high school bestie, the one whom I grew out my childhood and teenage era with, the one I have been sitting next to throughout my high school era. Happy 25th Birthday, Jacinta (don’t think she will be seeing this though) :). Friday has descended and weekend is near. Wishing all of you a safe and awesome weekend ahead ;). 

One Torrid Afternoon

Earlier in September(070911), my sis and I went out to the nearby hypermarket to do some last-minute shopping before her new semester resumes, just the two of us. The weather was scorching hot and while walking back to our car,we passed by AA's (abbreviated with obvious reason) and made an impromtu decision to get in and the thought of getting home right away after long hours of walking and walking immediately subsided :).

A cup of cold drinks or a bowl of shaved ice dessert in a sunny afternoon are definitely receiving change. Besides, its contemporary yet not too elaborate interior design looks very welcoming, especially suitable for the two of us who were lugging two big shopping bags each, very much like an obasan :P We ordered ABC Special and Cincao (i.e grass jelly) Pudding to be shared with the aid of their attractive pictorial menu.

When our dessert were served, all can be seen were bed of thick fluffy shaved ice. The cincao pudding we ordered for RM3 was basically a bowl of plain big chunks of cincao jelly underlain by thick shaved ice and spattered with evaporated milk. It tasted like the typical cincao milk drink we had in any coffee shop or café, but without sugar. Thus, the taste was in between a tinge of bitterness resulted from the grass jelly and some milky taste as the result of the evaporated milk. Very thirst quenching and I prefer this over the ABC Special.

The ABC Special, priced RM4, was a big bowl of icy cool snow with limited variants, containing jellies, green and red beans, corn kernels, and some groundnuts. I personally think that the desserts were not on par with the price we paid for (despite being cheap), but I rather think that we had a healthy dessert instead; less sugar, very minimum of artificial coloring as well as flavoring :)

Lunch Fix at Wojamama

We had our lunch quite late on the 010911 and we settled for Japanese at Wojamama, Star City sometime around 3pm. I couldn’t really recall our itinerary on that day, and I was only able to churn out this post after coming to two months of time. I have been spending so much of my time tinkering and fiddling through the the net on a little bit of this and that daily. I depleted my time on the previous week by giving my blog a wider, cleaner, simpler look at the same time giving it some cheery colorful tinge. Me, knowing nuts about html codes had been browsing the web spheres to figure out the coding, from scratch even as subtle as to place a gadget to the centre of the sidebars and the list goes on.

Backto our quick lunch fix the other day, after browsing through their menu, eventually we settled for their Happy Hour meals as per promoted in the bulletin board we first stumbled upon entering the eatery. We ordered in jiffy as we were aware that the restaurant will be closed for rest sometime around 5pm, or slightly later. We settled for 2 main dishes; I had Yakinuki Don, stir fried beef served on rice and the boss had Shogayaki Don, stir fried chicken with ginger served on rice. Quality wise, foods were on par with the price, and it would be nicer if there is a tinge of vinegar in the rice :).

Yakinuki Don

Shogayaki Don

These simple main dishes come with one side dish each. Thus, we had fried crab filament stick and chawanmushi. By the way, there were only 3 options to be chosen from. The one we crossed off was edameme.

chawanmushi

fried crab filament stick

compulsory dose of ryokucha

By the time we are done with our main meal, not much of choices for sushis available on the conveyor belt and most of the plates were either placed with sushi menu or artificial food display which will be prepared only upon request and by that time, the restaurant was in its midst of clearing up and closing down. Nonetheless, we managed to grab a plate of Kani Mayo and Corn Mayo sushis to be gobbled down quickly :).

Kani Mayo

Corn Mayo

It had been a busy week

Hye Hye! It has been a week since a post appeared on this cyber home of mine. Let's just say I had a busy and tiring week working on a coloring task. It was actually 15sets of 7 pieces each (more to come) of our new church building blue-print architectural plan. Apparently, I was the one with the closest work field and currently have the freest time. Thus, I was appointed to take up the task :). The boss was in KL for the whole week to get his visa to India done and to get some RM exchanged into rupees, attending his former uni-mate's wedding banquet as well as fetching a brand new Ipad2 home. Talking about this, we couldn't find any money changers here doing rupees. None, prolly due to its minority population in our state. The boss sensed some urgency for me in getting the work done and had been helpful by video-calling me from time to time to make sure that I did not drop asleep while coloring. Lol.

Beside the need to withdraw myself from web sphere for full concentration sake, I was bending myself to almost 90 degree towards the table to reach the far end of the A1 sheet most of the time, keeping my hand moving back and forth while my eyes gluing on the telly when my favorite drama(s) were aired. I was sort of targeting myself to be able to get over it in a maximum span of two days time before I get my hand laid on them. But, oh boy! the first piece for the first sheet of the first set took me a whopping 40 minutes (where the first page has the most complicated layout). All in all, everything was done only in a few hours time before submission on Friday night :).

On another church-wise update, the kids were joining the 2 days 1 night spiritual nurture program (i.e Bible Camp) last fortnight and RE teachers were required to turn up to assist in the group activities. I did not turn up on the first day, but went for only half of a day on their second day, which was also the final day. We were asked to guide and take part with the construction of an aquarium by using polystyrene sheets along with some other craft materials. Students were distributed into 5 large groups of different level and age. I found that all the kids in my group (to whom I have never taught as most of them were coming from Chinese medium class) were very very cooperative despite having me speaking a handful lip smattering Mandarin and I personally think that they did a very good job. Guess some bias-ness is allowed here as I am the purple's team in-charge *thick-skinned me* :P.

And, yesterday morning I was in-charged with the revision session with my RE students. It has been a regular practice for me to apply reward system ranging from a piece of candy to a small pack of junky or occasionally some Christian-related fancy stickers and bookmarks whenever the kids take part in the class. Few days back, my mom brought back a bag of candies, courtesy of afriend of our family who came back from China. She handed it to me and suggested me to distribute them to the fello kiddos. So, once they were done with the revision handouts, each one of them had their fair share in getting one candy each. Since the candies came in different flavor and packaging, to be fair I asked them to close their eyes and randomly pick one. For the girls especially, who luckily drew out the panda, they squealed in delight. Whilst, the rest were equally happy and starting popping into their mouth right away after the class dismisses. The look on their faces was priceless! :)