went to melaka (malacca) for a 24 hours trip with my parents. started off in the afternoon and it took just under 1.5 hours to get to my friend's house there from KL.
we intended this to be a 'eat and eat' trip, so here goes!
first meal, coconut pudding served in a.... coconut! duhh...
soft jelly made of coconut milk (not coconut water) cast inside a coconut. not too sweet, very smooth, refreshing. RM8
then my friend found out that there was a cat infestation in his car bonnet. a mother cat gave birth to 4 kittens in the engine compartment. fried cat sounds good to me.
the neighbor had some pretty nice metal cast gatings.
we chased the cats away and here is the mother cat giving us a hiss.
dinner was peranakan food
peranakan curry which is not hot at all, made of a certain fish type and lots of pineapple and slightly spicy curry sauce
tofu with veggies and black fungus in a claypot
yam leaves stir fried in sambal.
stewed pork, they used the spine near the shoulders, so there's quite abit of meat. very soft and nice. black pepper, and a queer mix of herbs, i dont know how to describe it. but its good.
omelet with cincaluk, i.e. fermented shrimp paste. good stuff.
all gone, RM68
we went to take a look at the failed melaka island project. the mosque is complete but in darkness. the bridge linking to the 'island' is lighted up, a cruel reminder of how idiotic some megaprojects really are. still, it makes a good night shot.
evening sky
next stop, newton food center
first rate hawker food
'sweet soups', black glutinous rice, red bean, green bean, wheat porridge, ginko, etc...
oyster omelet with chilli
huge fellas!
meat dumplings pan fried with some soup in it.
ate some other stuff but didnt take good pictures of them. so cant post them up coz its all deleted.
I LOVE MY SECONDARY SCHOOL
St. John's Institution Kuala Lumpur. Form 1 - Upper 6 (1994 - 2000)
Founded 1904 on Bukit Nanas Kuala Lumpur, by the brothers from the DeLaSalle brothers.
went back to see my old teachers who really taught me well when i was young and ignorant. just seeing them and walking past my ex-classrooms makes me happy. although in time long gone i had lots of misunderstandings with them, when you are older and hopefully wiser, the words of your mentors will one day come back to you and then i pray you will see the light of their chastisement. God bless my teachers.
these are a few of my favourite foods:
'pan mee' stall near my house. flat handmade noodles from flour in a salty soup base, with some green veggies, egg, minced meat balls, sliced pork, fried anchovies, and it goes really well with hot pounded cili padi with vinegar and lime juice.
'tossai topi' (with ghee) at 1 Utama, fermented rice flour dough cooked on a hot plate either with water or ghee, with accompanying condiments: dahl and potato, chicken curry, and chatnee (coconut puree with herbs)
regular tossai (cooked with water)
rosli mi rebus at Jalan Masjid India. noodles with peanut sauce, bean sprouts, hard boiled egg, shallots, sweet chilli.
Yip Kee beef noodles at Menjalara. stewed beef meat, tendons, stomach, intestines with egg noodle.
mum prefers chicken feet with mushrooms.
home is always a great place to be, more so if you can get a tangible taste of its sweetness.
so happens that there were some ripening rambutans on the tree just outside my house compound, planted by the previous owner, we were beginning to enjoy the fruits of patience.
the other plant outside the house is a young coconut tree, which always had a few fruits ready for plucking.
the tool used to cut the branches holding the fruits. you dont pluck them out one by one but trim the whole branch off. plucking them one by one will reduce the next season's fruiting and cutting it off whole will encourage more branches to grow and hence more fruits.
coconut opening. i use this large forged metal knife known localy as a 'parang'
cut the top of the fruit off in rings to get rid of the outer husk.
....till you see the outer shell of the inner fruit.
hit it right in the middle with the knife to make a hole. pour out the juice into a cup with an attached strainer to get rid of some dirt that may had got in while you were chopping the fruit.
this is an example of a fruit thats too old. dont drink the water as it will be high in oil and not sweet. the husk has dried up and changed colour to brownish.
next chop the fruit into two and get to the flesh inside. the one on the right is a young fruit, as the flesh is almost a transparent colour.
this is an old fruit. the flesh is thick and does not yield easily under spoon.
some of the unusual fruits. just with the shell and no flesh inside.
my dad also has a few fish. these two japanese carps grew too large and were eating up all the fish food he threw into the pond, which made the other fish not able to feed well. so the two bullies had to go. my hand is there to gauge the size of these things. too bad they are not good for cooking.
a wild orchid that my mum planted at another part of the house. nice.
took the aeroline bus back to KL from singapore last week. noted to be one of the most expensive lines to get on, i thought i should at least try it out once. the ticket cost me S$47, a 'normal' ticket would actually cost only $23; hence there was high expectations from this liner.
the office had a waiting room with a tv and some nice chairs to wait for your bus.
the bus came promptly and we were ushered down to board.
the interior was business like. clean and no musty smells. the seats had a small cushion each with safety belts. pretty comfortable but not amazingly snug. i didnt feel any sore neck after the trip.
each chair had a little foldable table, like in planes.
even the seat number looks like it got ripped off a plane.
the terminal was by the way next to the ferry terminal at harbourfront. very convenient as there is a mrt station nearby.
the driver made some announcements and they help with your bags at the luggage compartment. service was good and they were quick with the luggage and boarding. soon we passed the immigration counters and passed the second link causeway.
homeland!
goodbye red dot.
the bus stopped somewhere along the highway for a toilet break. the announcement was quite funny. it specially mentioned 'the toilet is for LIGHT usage only. for non LIGHT usage, please inform the bus captain who will make a stop along the highway. Please remember that the toilets are for LIGHT usage only. thank you.'
this is what you see when you first board the bus. there is a lower lounge area and the higher seating area.
here is the most disappointing part: lunch.
https://www.aeroline.com.my/bus_features.html
the website shows a picture of what a meal looks like. but see below to get an idea what trash i was fed. you call this lunch? totally not good.double thumbs down. and this was for the 'normal' meal. if you were vegetarian, they would serve you a bowl of instant maggi mee. what crap. after lunch you were supposedly able to get freeflow of tea/coffee. but they guy only gave one cup. the only good thing about meals onboard is that you dont waste the 30 minutes at some roadside coffee shop and the 10 minutes or so making a detour to get there.
the seats was comfortable and could recline really far back, which i think was the most valuable part of the trip - good sleep.
what the downstairs lounge looked like. very comfy. but its all the bus attendants who sit around there and munch on their own food.
nice lcd and next to it supposedly the 'snack bar' which is nothing but a microwave and a water dispenser.
every seat had a powerpoint to charge whatever you had. oh yeah, and nice legrests.
after crossing into malaysia, they started playing movies. point 1: the screen is too small, point 2: the sound is too soft.
still, the trip from end to end took just 5 hours, which is the fastest ever i had. overall, i wouldnt recommend this coach company to travelers, unless of course you have too much dough to burn. still, even if you do, i would suggest 'first class' by transtar, which is only S$1 more: http://www.transtar.com.sg/firstclass.php
hmmm..... will try it next time round!
taking a break from lab and going back to my hometown, kuala lumpur from the 4th to 14th. have to start writing up my masters thesis asap. but really tired overall, mentally and physically. have been taking swimming lessons too, yea, i cant swim. but today i started on the breaststroke and can now almost get the strokes correct, but have yet to perfect my breathing timings. looking forward to practicing it and perfecting that one. then probably in a months time, once i get that stroke perfect, it will be freestyle and then butterfly. hurrah!
why i want to learn swimming?
well, singapore is a low laying island and at the moment the only insurance i have against it drowning in the sea of global warming is owning a 8th storey apartment. so in order to increase my chances of survival, i thought swimming would be good.
i was telling one of my labmates that i could now semi-swim the breaststroke and he doubted me. so i told him that he was not keeping abreast of my latest developments.
:p
this popular science book relates the microscopic and behind the scenes action to the workings of a normal day in a house. from explaining static you hear out of the radio to how toothpaste is made to the stuff that gets trapped in your hair and why the sound of a leaking dripping tap is so annoying.
its entertaining and sometimes illuminating. but some things you really dont want to know, like how they mass produce margarine and cakes, using lesser than ideal materials. it makes one more aware of amazing amount of science that goes on in the background without us humans even realizing or caring to bother about - it just happens and we sometimes cant care less of it or we cannot be else the amount of data to process will be too humongous.
anyway this is a good book to while your time away and to scare yourself out of breathing in vacuum cleaner air, eating ice cream, chips, margarine, cake,, standing under a tree during a thunderstorm, and washing your face.
below are a few pages about what happens to a house during a thunderstorm and what lightning and thunder is all about.
