Eagle, Falcon, Hornet and Fat A380

To be honest I am a bit disappointed with AA2006. First is the participants: unfortunately there is no MiG or Sukhoi. Except Saab Grippen, all of them are American fighters. Second is the flying demo, somehow it wasn't that great, no wow acrobatic maneuver. Ga greget! I still remembered how SU-27 did the cobra maneuver in Jakarta years ago. It was a big wow. And today the F-16 and F-15 didn't do that kind of maneuver.

But at least the fat A380 did demo flight. It was amazing to see that giant-fat-aircraft flew. And the JSF mock-up is displayed. Nett-nett AA2006 was ok but not wow. A bit sad though, knowing that Asian Airshow will be shifted to HK and I most probably will not go there...

Bak Kwa (肉干)

Forget about Bee Cheng Hiang. BCH may be the most noticable bak kwa, having stalls everywhere. But BCH is not the most popular one. It is Lim Chee Guan. Unlike BCH, LCG only has 2 shops, both in China Town area. Infact, one is opposite the other. Two evidences on why LCG is a to die for bak kwa:
1). During Chinese New Year period you must be dreaming if you want to buy LCG bak wah, unless you want to wait in a very long queue. It was like queuing for train ticket back to kampung in Gambir during Lebaran! Even if you patience enough to queue, they may run out of stock before your turn. And there are other bak kwa shops next to LCG shops, which have no queue, but peeps still waiting for LCG.
2). My colleagues from Hongkong, whenever they are in town they always buy LCG back eventhough BCH has couple of shops in Hongkong.

The taste? Well, no explaination is needed. Who can resist a grilled pork meat?

Green Spiky Thingy

Just went out to Geylang for supper. Feasting on the yummiest fruit of all, the king, the durian! Lots of fruit stall there, but we went directly to the one next to a chinese temple. Been there once and the stall itself was recommended by my friend (who is a hard core durian lover). The durians are guaranteed for its sweet and tender taste.

So how was it? Well, I wish that I can post the aroma of this durian on this blog. Man, I can still smell the strong durian aroma on my fingers... See that juicy yellowish durian meat? Whoa... Lekker! I bet by looking at it, my fellow durian junkies, you can feel the sweet and juicy taste in your watery mouth... Alamak rasanya!

Blue Dolphins and Red Crab

This is my b'day cake, given my fellow colleagues in the office. Since they know I like beach and fruits, so they picked a fruit cake with orange swin short,2 two blue dolphins and one red crab...

Yong Tau Fu with Special Sauce

This time it didn't have pork in it. At least as far as I know. It is a yong tau fu, but with special made sauce. Don't ask me what is in that sauce, cos I don't know. And since this sauce that makes it special so the owner is keeping the recipe locked in secret vault somewhere. What I can tell from this dark-colored-sauce-springkled-with-sesame-seeds that it tastes a bit sweet. The place that I went is called Orchad Yong Tau Fu. They have 2 outlets, the main outlet is in Koek Rd. I think that's why they use the name Orchad.

Oh, btw for peeps who don't know what yong tau fu is, YTF is quite similar with baso loncat. YTFs are actually fish paste stuffed into items like smooth tofu, ladies fingers, fried tofu, chillies or sliced brinjals (egg plant). You can also find them wrapped in thin soya skin (dumpling) which are then served in a soup or fried. Other than those, the stall also serves veggie, boiled eggs, and variety of balls (I mean fish balls, crab balls, meat balls). Usually it comes with either beehoon, egg noodles or rice. This particular YTF stall also serves non halal ingredients, such as pork intestine, liver... Ha ha! But I didn't ordered those stuffs, so at least the one in the picture is pretty much halal.

Big Dirk and Tiny Nate

It's NBA All Star time once again. And I just watched the All Star Saturday reply. Whoa... amazing result! This year we got the tallest 3-point shooter winner and the smallest (at least among the participants) slam dunk winner. The 7-footer Dirk Nowitzki beat Ray Allen and Gilbert Arenas in the shoot-out. While 5-9 Nate Robinson, with help from 1986 champ Spud Webb, edged Andre Iguodala in the first time ever tie-break. Too bad for Andre, cause his second dunk in the preliminary round (coming from behind the basket) was absolutely amazing. In skill challenge competition, Dwyane Wade crowned as champ, defeating LeBron James. Why on earth did this guy in this contest anyway? He should be in the slam dunk competition!

the Pig

(from Wikipedia): Pigs are one of the most intelligent mammals, and some, such as the Asian pot-bellied pig, are kept as pets. Pigs are reportedly more intelligent and more trainable than dogs and cats.
Whoa! Not only adorable and yummy, they are smart too!

And do you know that they have many names? (again from Wikipedia)
Boar - An adult male pig
Sow - An adult female pig
Piglet/farrow - A juvenile pig
Shoat - A young pig between 100 to 180 lb (50 to 90 kg)
Gilt - An immature female pig
Barrow - A castrated male pig
Hog - a domestic or wild adult swine, especially one raised for slaughter because they fatten quickly; in its original sense it means a castrated boar.

(adorable piglets picture was taken from pig farm in bali 2003)

Yellow Pudding

I thought it was a mango pudding with chocolate & blue berry as garnish. After first scoop, I still thought it was. The yellowish thingy was made from mango. But underneath this yellow layer was not mango. It tasted thick creamy with a bit of vanilla. And not so sweet, which made it even better. Especially served as a dessert after a fine meal.

Dead Pigeons

We saw a couple of dead pigeons on the roof this morning. They are killed by authorities, not because they were spies in mission flying out gah-men top secrets micro films to enemies or trafficking drugs... come on, those thoughts only apply in movies!

They are killed -or to be exact- culled (after looking at dictionary: to reduce the population of wild animals by selective slaughter). Why? Aren't they adorable? Flocking in the garden or yard in front of churches, plucking crummed bread from children's hands... But you have to see in other perspective. HDB tenants' perspective, who don't have dryer at home. Pigeons eat, then they have to poo. And they can poo while flying. And they don't fly low. So if you dry your freshly washed clothes out side, the more pigeons in your area, the bigger the chance that poo landed on your favorite shirt. And now world is stormed by bird flu. So enuff said. And for our block the culling took place yesterday. But apparently these 2 pigeons were stronger than the rest so they died a bit later. Anyway, thinking of the word culling means that those birds -which were still happily enjoying their meal- are the chosen ones. The ones that are chosen to stay alive. And these 2 dead pigeons are among those which were chosen to be eliminated. Whoa...

Actually goverment is suggesting (suggesting -since no fine applied yet) for not feeding wild animals in residential area. Not only pigeons, but also cats. But we always see peeps feeding them in our block. Bread and rice for birds, and for cats they even feed them with canned cat food! Wah liao! No wonder we've had the fattest undomesticated cats in the neighbourhood!

Bak Kut Teh: Sinful Food

Probably because of the work load, me and my fellow colleagues suddenly carved for good food. Nah! Not because of work, it's just we want to eat something special. Special means something outside the office area. Gastronomia and Penang have been ruled out. So we decided to try the famous bak kut teh in Serangoon area. None of us have tried it before, but the place is so famous that any taxi driver will know where it is. And so is our taxi driver.

Basic rules from Eating 101: never order when hungry. Although we did try to restrain ourselves, we still end up with 5 side dishes on top of bak kut teh. Actually we did restrain ourselves by not ordering pork kidney... otherwise we ended up with more! But if you looked around, people actually ordered more than us... so 5 side dishes are pretty standard. We had pork intestines, pork skin, pork liver, cah kueh and one bowl of veggie. At least we showed that we were still health conscious by ordering veggie... Ha ha!
Anyway, the bak kut teh was spicy, strong peppery spicy! It was delicious. The side dishes were wonderful. After 40 minutes of intensive eating we almost finshed every single piece of this sinful food, what left was guilty feeling...

Getuk Getuk

It is always nice to have something that you like especially if you haven't got it for quite some time. Like the case of mie rica for example. What a great event it was! Yummy! Even now I can imagine the spicy taste of mie rica. Anyway, I haven't eaten getuk for months and today we bought a couple from Bengawan Solo. The yellow one is called getuk ongol, which tastes like ongol-ongol. I like the brown one better (getuk getuk), which is a normal getuk lah.

Man's best buddy

We went to hong bao dog show in Expo today. Whoa! You can find dogs from every sizes! Dogs with shirts, with socks, with ribbon & bow. We even saw one brown chihuahua wearing yellow tutu! Lots of terrier, shih tzu, pekingnese, goldie, and collie. And amazingly there are numbers of siberian husky & alaskan malamutes in this hot & humid island! We also saw one black russian terrier.
Except couple of big and friendly goldie, who wetting my hand with their saliva, my other fave are one nice, unleashed & friendly border collie and a two year old big brown german shepperd - you can spot these two in the picture. We also encountered with big dogs. A big 7-years-old bearded collie and a shy 2-years-old husky. These dogs are big, really big. I bet if they decided to run, they can easily yank down their owner and drag them along. All of them are calm -some of them looked cool; you can pet them, of course with permission from their owner. I guess you won't take your dogs to this kind of event (or even to communal park) if they are not well behave. Imagine you have to chase your dog around before it storm the dog-food stall...

Pingin punya anjing nih!

(play Jaws soundtrack when viewing this)

$10 Million Jackpot

News was out: 9 tickets matched, 9 people will share the $10 million. By one night 9 new millioners were made! Dang! Should buy the lotto next year...

Purple Chili

Today my purple chili fruited for the very first time. Remember that I bought this chili back in September? It died after couple of weeks. Don't ask me why. But from its seeds I managed to grow its descendents, two plants. And these tiny plants survived being left alone for 2 weeks when we left for Koeln. They started to bloom in last 2 weeks, but none became chili yet... until today!

$10 Million Jackpot

Starting a week ago, I started to realize there were more people queing in front of lotto shops. The queue was getting longer and longer everyday and everywhere, island wide. The reason is the annual Hongbao lottery. The main attraction is the jackpot: $10 Million! And some said that in the last couple of years there was always a jackpot winner. I think most of my colleagues bought the tickets too. Probably one of them hit the jackpot this year.

Note: the draw has been done today, at 10 pm.

Lion Dance

This morning while working suddenly one email poped up. Announcement from big boss, saying that today at 11 there will be a lion dance in the office. What? Lion dance? In the office? Well well well... What a news!

So at 11 we all crammed in the office lobby waiting for the lions (yep, lions... there were 2 of them!). The sound of cymbals and drums were deafening, as the lions made their entrance. Their were dancing, wiggling their heads up and down as they approached the bait: the hanging veggie. After taking the veggie, they laid down and started peeling oranges. What lions that attracted by hanging veggie and oranges!

From Kejaksaan to AMK

You probably don't believe it. But it is true. We had mie rica for dinner. Yes, the one and the only, the real - the authentic mie rica plus the babat. Directly coming from hot and steamy kitchen in jalan Kejaksaan Braga to our small apartment in Ang Mo Kio. Hah!

I know, you must say that the taste will be different, especially after taking 2 hours non-stop flight plus couple hours of delay in Husein. But what the heck! Better have one than nothing, right? At least today we did taste the hot spicy mie rica. Ha ha ha!

Chingay: Giant Dog at Orchad

Chingay. Honestly, the very first time I heard this word an image of drag queen & peeps in skimpy suit parading in the street crossed my mind. Sounded like something to do with mardi gras. But, come on, mardi gras in this island? Actually it was quite close. Chingay is a parade, but not that kind of parade. It is a parade to welcome the spring season, the start of new year. The word chingay itself means 'a decorated float', which refers to the miniature stage or float borne on the shoulder of performers -or nowdays on top of a lorry or a truck.

Anyway, hundreds of people, locals and tourists, was flocking on Orchad to see this parade. The first float lorry is the giant dog with several smaller doggies attached there. Dancers dressed up as dogs, any kind of dogs, from dalmation with sunglasses and hay hat, futuristic robot dog to bones (yep, bones!). There were also dog that burst out of colorful present box. This reminded me of one of my friend, who dressed up as a box of present complete with ribbon to costume party years ago...

Then came bunch of performers, marching band, dancers in shiny and mini outfits, more lorries, etcetera... One of my favorite was the Japanese contigent. Hundreds of people dressed in colorful costume, young and old, kids and aunties, dancing and cheering, surrounding their lorry. It was really cool! Almost at the tail of the parade there was a lorry with giant mechanical orang utan, waiving his right hand to the audience while his left was shouldering Jane & Tarzan.

Yu Sheng again, but wasted!

Just been invited to CNY lunch at Lei Garden. Great restaurant, great food. Tables were full today, quite a favorite place for business lunch. In every table people did the 'lo hei'. We did it as well. Following that was the proper lunch... but alas for me, I was in the state of masuk angin berat. Didn't feel well since woke this morning. Well, I thought hot tea will help... it usually does, but not this time. Forcing myself to finish most of the dishes, but -as you know- Chinese food dishes are oily... and at the end my stomach didn't manage to hold its manner anymore. Although I managed (a narrow escape to save my face in front of my clients) to get into the toilet before I burst out... nett-nett what a waste of good food! Everything straight down to drain!

Well, probably I should've tossed the yu sheng higher.