Charity Tee: To Japanese with love

This is a backdated post as I have just received the tee from the boss last Thursday during his visit. On one afternoon of March 2011, we were all shocked about an earthquake and tsunami happening at Japan with an 8.9 earthquake on the richter scale and a massive tsunami was sweeping into Sendai. It was really shocking and saddening. Though rescue workers continue their frantic search, Japan's death toll is already expected to exceed 10,000 (via here).

Today, although Japan is in its midst of recovering from the virtual nightmare, the government's Reconstruction Design Council has proposed a set of steps for rebuilding areas clobbered by the Great East Japan Earthquake, but it left unanswered where money needed to implement them will come from (via here).

Almost the whole world is taking part in giving a little hand to the Japanese, and I am impressed that even kids as young as kindergarten age are exposed to the values of lending a hand and sharing sorrows. They made their move in contributing pre-loved books and toys for the children in Japan at such a tender age.

As for our side, if you have been following my previous cyber-home, you will know that the boss is a craver for all-things-Japanese. I am glad that he and the kaki-s (buddies sharing a common interest in scale modeling and collectible figures) shared the same mind in purchasing the charity tee organized by Red Monkey Company based in Hong Kong. I didn't know that I have my share too until he brought over the tee for me the other day ;).

With RMC's non-profit making aim this round, all the moneys paid will be contributed to the Red Cross for the Japanese orphan victim. You can see the boss and his kaki-s basking in their new tee here ;).

The graphic on the tee were designed by two Japanese Children; Kurata Rakuyo (5 years old) and Kurata Narumi (6 years old) whilst the slogan ひとりじゃないよ (Read: hitori janai yo) with the meaning ‘you are not alone’ were created by Kurata Mihoko. These three young kids wanted to highlight the plea as the kids are waiting for the parents to collect them but unfortunately their parents are no longer around. For this design, they were released in April 2011 and sold for HKD 201.63 each :).

The boss has his in black whilst mine was white. The boss had over-estimated my size and ordered a M size for me and I have sent mine for alteration along with another souvenir tee which I have gotten from him for quite sometime ago ;P.

F Square: Friends & Farewell

F²: Friends and Farewell (20th May 2011)

Another farewell celebration and this time is only a small fraction of the whole big class. It seemed like there were so many lasts, but this was really the last, till we see each other again during convocation, perhaps. It was an 'exaggerate' do for me to present myself to the dinner since it was carried out on a Friday night. On normal Friday nights, my family and I usually end up for night services at the church. This time was a little exceptional, and I was sort of ‘prepared’ for it. Somehow, I have this feeling that I am causing a lot of trouble for the others. You will know what I mean later on.

Albeit the dinner was carried out in the evening, scheduled at 7.30pm, which eventually delayed to 8.30pm, I got myself ready as early as noon time with my sister. After we fetched some food for lunch, we headed to collect my thesis and thereafter submitted them to school. Right after that, my sister dropped me at Suria to catch up with some of my friends after their movie, for whom I am going to tag until dinner time ;P. I spent my time on all sorts of reading materials, from photo shopping, photography, cooking, beading, to fictions (only a peek or two into every one of them) at Times while waiting ;).

After I caught up with them, we adjourned to the café. Deep inside me, I feel truly indebted and tad guilty but blessed with good friends ;). At the same time, I really feel like banging my head into the stones for not being able (I prefer to call it not courageous enough) to manoeuvre the car on my own. My driving license has been sitting comfortably inside my purse for 7.5 good years now, with some exceptional driving with my dad as my companion. If I could drive independently, there will be a long list of ‘thus I can’ coming along.

To cut the long story short, the open aired restaurants in Seri Selera, Kampung Air was very well reputed by many food bloggers. There were five restaurants in all, and we resolved down at Twin Sky Seafood Restaurant. Foods served was pretty decent - with the crab of 2 different flavours, fresh steamed prawn, Dōngfēng luó, steamed fish in spicy assam with 2 servings of different types of leafy green vege. Most of the photos in this post are credited to our ever willing photographer. They were hijacked from Mr.Keat’s FB account, with consent via MSN ;P. 

It was my first time savored on 东风螺 (Dōngfēng luó). In case you are wondering how the chinese character came about (whereby I can only read the second character), I google-translated it literally with ‘East Wind Snail’. I remembered this vividly as we literally translated it that night. Direct translation do works wonder for me =).

I'd sort of been kidding myself into believing that it would be no big deal and there would be no real emotion. How wrong I was! *Paiseh-ness* Enough said =P

Manhattan Craze

I have not been assiduous enough in updating my blog and please pardon me in case you see some time travel in this cyber home of mine. They are among the last few (I hope), but not the least ;). Manhattan Fish Market was a craze when the student offer was on a hit. The few selected menus were marked as low as RM10 nett per set inclusive of bottomless fizzies (except for creamy seafood pasta). This is the cheapest deal in my personal encounter in the MFM branches in the East Malaysia. Kuo, Joyce and I were here for two days consecutively, on the 12th and 13th April 2011. The former one was a meet up among Project design’s member and the latter one was with a impromptu hangout in a big group in conjunction of Ngu’s birthday.

I am a boring in person when it comes to food. I just don’t get tired nor bored eating the similar food each time I visited the eatery. Sometime ago, I learnt that fish and chips (minus the chips) are among the Dutch street food, or better known lekkerbeck, which means white fish filet breaded and deep fried. This is one of the reasons that has been intoxicating me to toy around with the dream of stepping my feet in the land of Netherland or Holland, someday. Back to the reality, these are what we had:

Creamy Seafood Pasta

Cala ala Olio

Seafood 101

All-Star Fish 'n Chips

The big pack =)

New Cyber Home

I have been keeping a blog via wordpress dot com since June 2009. To round the sum, it has been 2 good years since I started to blog. Wordpress dot com had been an easy site to work with (not too easy at times), most importantly it has never threw its tantrum on me, ever, which have made me contemplated to move (for umpteenth of times). First and foremost, my decision of moving my blog isn’t because of any personal matters, or any other issues which ‘requires’ me to move. It was just that being a non-ardent blogger who did not update her blog religiously, I think I am stingy (I rather call myself frugal. tee hee) to invest into a domain or self hosted wordpress (dot org) which permits me to have customable layouts and so.

Girls are made of sugar and spice and all things nice. Boys are made of slugs and snails and puppy dog tails. I drool over all pretty and nice layout for blogger dot com, albeit I cannot make one which I cannot have with wordpress dot com. I hope I made the right choice, despite hearing blogspot used to get hiccups once in a while and look up here, if you are interested for the comparison between the two mentioned. Till then, have a nice weekend ahead and happy blogging =)

Books Obsession and Nyonya House (娘惹屋)

Right after our first paper (250411), we sneaked out to 1B considering the fact that we have about 10 days gap (if my memory serves me right) before the next paper. While the rest were off for Fast 5, Joyce and I hop over to Harris. There was a big bang sale on certain selected books. However, that was more than enough to make us contemplate on which to choose! Brightly litted with strong air-cond, it was very pleasant to be spending time going through books. How I wished those were holidays that time =P. After a good time choosing, putting down and narrowing down our selections, we finally ended up with 4 books, 2 each. =)

Thereafter, we headed to Nyonya House (娘惹屋) which was located at Ground Floor for a late lunch. We practically had the restaurant all for ourselves, which also explained how we managed the pix below =P. We had our books neatly arranged on their display wall behind our seats, and snapping away with glee. Err, have I ever mentioned that I am not really an ardent reader? But I love owning books =P

Nyonya or also known as the Straits Chinese or Peranakan arewell known for the traditional cuisines and refinements. The ambience of this restaurant has the veritable feel of a Peranakan, at least for me who's not being able to know a single authentic Nyonya friend, someone who have never seen how a real Peranakan residence may look like. It was all about my imagination that marvels with what Shirleen had mentioned to me before about her home town and being a less than a semi Nyonya. =)

Besides this reminded me of Little Nyonya series, which was really an eye opening to me personally towards Peranakan culture and food. Through the series also, I came to know about their whats, whens,hows and whatnots. Not letting slip, drooling over their delicacies all the time.

These are what the both of us shared for lunch that afternoon:

Grilled Stingray (Ikan pari) in BBQ Style

This is one of the must-order if I happen to drop by for the next visit. The fish was perfectly grilled. The flesh was very tender and not too dry but crunchy enough. Very well-balanced.=) I was relieved that they separate the sambal topping, instead of spreading it on top of the fish, which a little bit too spicy for my taste bud, but tasted very much to my liking.

Kang Kung stir-fried with sambal belacan

Don’t get deceived by its humble and bland looking. It tasted superb, spicy, has strong aromatic shrimp paste, enough wok-hei.