RESTORAN IPOH ROAD YONG TOW FOO (I/III)

(This is part of the 3 series of Kuala Lumpur food escapade I went just recently)




Ampang Yong Tau Fu ( also spelled yong tao foo, yong tau fu, yong tau foo, yong tow foo or yong tau hu) is one of the major famous food of Kuala Lumpur. I tried it once about 9 years ago. We went to the same place but it was sold out. The next best place to eat the best Yong Tau Fu is Ipoh Road. Many people said it is equally good. We went there instead and the whole place is basically an ancient bungalow with large compound for many parking spaces).



We ordered tauhu bakar (deep fried tofu) as side dish. It is fried to perfection and it will just ‘disperse’ as you bite it, melting down with your saliva.



The Yong Tau Fu soup and gravy version are both nice. We ordered bitter gout, fried tofu and lady’s fingers stuffed with fish meat, fish balls, dumplings and fried dumplings.



Every single one of them is good. There are no complaints and definitely worth a visit again. The fried dumpling especially is so well done I dare to declare that it is the best I ever tried. I wish to try Ampang Yong Tau Fu again in the future so I can compare with this one from Ipoh Road.

KEDAI MAKANAN SENG HUAT (II/III)

(This is part of the 3 series of Kuala Lumpur food escapade I went just recently)



This is the MAIN reason why I go for this food trip this time. Where in Malaysia can you find the best Bak Kut Teh (literally translated to Pork Rib Tea)? Every Tom, Dick and Harry will tell you to go Klang. It has always been my long-lived dream to eat Klang’s Bak Kut Teh. No friends who had tried the Bak Kut Teh have ever complained about the quality. In fact, there is one who goes to an extent to claim that it is so good that flying to Kuala Lumpur from Sibu just to eat Klang’s Bak Kut Teh and return back is worth it. Now, finally after many years of dreaming, I finally managed to see, smell and try it myself.



Klang is near the port and used to be the Sultan’s town. Since it is near the port, Bak Kut Teh becomes an important food for the workers in those days. It is taken as breakfast before they start their work. Until today, Klang is still has a huge port nearby at Port Klang. This is basically a Bak Kut Teh town because you can see many shops selling it everywhere you turn. There are 3 famous shops recommended. We went to one of them, which is called Seng Huat at Jalan Sultan (half under the bridge with parking area beside it and railway line behind it).



Unlike most places, they serve Bak Kut Teh separately and not mixing all the different parts together. The Bak Kut Teh soup is extremely thick with Chinese herbs. After trying it for the first time, I feel that it tasted very close to the Foochow ‘Bek Ting Yuk’, which literally means eight types of valuable herbs medicine. It tasted as if they have one or two herbs less. That’s it – my impression.



It is definitely the best Bak Kut Teh I ever tasted. I tried Bak Kut Teh of Sibu, Kota Kinabalu, Johor Bahru, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. Nobody comes close. The meat are cooked to great perfection and extremely juicy as you bite their tender texture down while your tongue enjoys the great taste.



MAGNIFIQUE! The only regret is our tummies could not take the dry Bak Kut Teh version which I heard is quite famous too. Another interesting thing about the way they serve tea is that they bring you a whole set of collection of packed tea. You just choose which type you want and you can go and fill the teapot with boiled water from the many every boiling kettle stations around. You can go and reload once your teapot is empty.



They also have this unique portion with big bone. I love to chew bones and so this is definitely my favourite part!

Apart from this store, another two are quite famous too in Klang. One is The Old Stall at Jalan Stesen Satu and Yeoh's Bak Kut Teh at Jalan Batu Tiga Lama. I wish I can try all and compare! Oh well, maybe next time!

COCONUT FLOWER SEAFOOD RESTAURANT (III/III)

(This is part of the 3 series of Kuala Lumpur food escapade I went just recently)



I recalled Phua Chu Kang’s wife, Rosie is from Pulau Ketam (Crab Island). If Crab Island is famous for crabs, it is definitely worth it to take a trip there to consume crabs! Unfortunately, after fully loaded ourselves with Klang’s Bak Kut Teh, we needed some time to rest before our stomach can digest more food. We spent some time around Port Klang to see this huge international port, probably the biggest in Malaysia. We reached the ferry harbour and it costs RM6 to reach Pulau Ketam. The journey will take approximately 45 minutes.



We later drove to Kampong Teluk Kong to Coconut Flower Seafood Restaurant at Jalan Udang Galah. It is famous for the seafood dishes mostly. The place has a nice ambience for a getaway from the busy city life. It is hidden in the middle of nowhere. In fact, in another area in Port Klang, they even dug man-make huge pond just for fishing. Well, that's how people here enjoys life I guess.



We decided to sit in one of these pavilions outside the main eating area. It is more private and is cool enough for a relaxing time to eat 'slowly' as we savoured the food.



You can even park your car in the pavilion too.



I ordered the famous 'toddy' drink. It is basically fermented coconut flower juice. It tasted like sweetened vinegar and has the heat level like beer. Good to drink with seafood.



We ordered two types of crabs, fried beehon for our ‘high tea’. The fried beehon has its own exquisite taste with clams inside. The crabs are exceptionally good.



The first type of crab we ordered is marmite crab. It has the nice sweet sticky taste.





The other crab we ordered is the wong kam crab (crab cooked with duck egg yolk). This one has an interesting flavour of its own and the ingredients made the meat extremely good to eat. Both are equally good since each has its own unique taste.

KIMI IS THE 2007 F1 WORLD CHAMPION

Kimi Matias Räikkönen has finally become the Formula 1 world champion! He started his career with Sauber Petronas in 2001. Later, he was with West McLaren Mercedes for 3 years before renamed to Team McLaren Mercedes for 2005 and 2006. He joined Scuderia Ferrari Malboro this year and finally won the title. He had finished second twice, in 2003 and 2005.

I decided I should not miss this race since this is one of the best title fight for years! During the start of the name, both Massa and Räikkönen blocked the lead from Alonso and Hamilton. Hamilton was blocked by Massa and later was blocked by Alonso who took the chance to squeeze to third place after Hamilton slowed down to avoid collision. It is fair to say both Massa and Alonso played major roles in forcing Hamilton to be pushed to the back. Hamilton was having more problems with his gearbox before finally overcame the problem.

Massa was pivotal in helping Räikkönen to win the world champion by staying close second after his last pit stop at lap 50. Räikkönen ran on more fuel as well as 3 laps longer. It was enough for him to squeeze over Massa to take the lead. Even if he doesn't, I am sure Ferrari will ask Massa to give way since he is out of the title fight anyway. In that situation, there were speculations of whether Alonso will let Hamilton overtake him if Hamilton was to reach 4th place. Will Team McLaren-Mercedes ask him to let Hamilton overtake him to win the title since he would have enough points?

Well, we all know the bad relationship between Alonso and Hamilton. Many speculated if the situation should arrive, Alonso may not give way at all. Well, he is having a high possibility of not racing for them anyway next season. This season has been plagued by enough controversies and drama. Finally, everything has come to an end. It was among the most exciting battles to the title in years.

The latest news regarding the investigation into fuel temperatures of the cars of Nico Rosberg of Williams, Robert Kubica of BMW-Sauber and Nick Heidfeld of BMW-Sauber which were more than 10 degrees below the ambient temperature had also ended. If their points are penalized, Hamilton could move from seventh to fourth in the race and will be enough to win the title. Stewards decided finally not to impose sanctions and that means Kimi is confirmed and declared the official 2007 Formula 1 world champion.

2007 FORMULA 1 BRAZIL GRAND PRIX

The final Grand Prix of this season.

Lewis Hamilton has 107 points, Fernando Alonso has 103 points, Kimi Räikkönen has 100 points and Felipe Massa has 86 points.

Will history be created? All 3 (except Massa) have the chance to be the 2007 champion. Massa is taking pole position, Hamilton is 2nd, Räikkönen is 3rd and Alonso is 4th.

Tonight local time about 11:30pm is when the race will start.

It will be exciting!

AIRBUS A380 TO SIA FIRST

This mega huge superjumbo jet is going to Singapore Airlines first for a debut flight to Sydney on October 25th 2007. It will be used for flights to Sydney, London, New York, Johannesbuurg, Dubai, Doha and Tokyo. It is so spacious that there are wild ideas of having bars and casinos on board. However, the giant size will require modifications to airport infrastructure, which limits the number of destinations it will be able to fly to.

It measures at 73-meter long (239-feet) two-storey and can carry a maximum 853 people in an all-economy set-up (525 in the normal three-class configuration) and has 50 percent more floor space than the next biggest aircraft, the Boeing 747-400 jumbo.

The two years delay in delivery is down to complications with the wiring of more than 330 miles (530 kilometres) of cable in each aircraft! Scary shit!

CNA 7 October 2007
CNA 9 October 2007
CNA 14 October 2007
CNA 15 October 2007
CNA 15 October 2007

RESIDENT EVIL: EXTINCTION

Resident Evil is one of the movies which causes successful release of games based on the movie. Matrix is another which follows the same line. There are many more from the superheroes collection like Spiderman. Other movies which has a backward reaction from games popularity are for example Silent Hill and Final Fantasy.

Extremely thrilling action packed movie as expected from this third installment. Milla Jovovich has been always been always showing full body flesh in movies since The Fifth Element. Her skin is so silky smooth in some close-ups you thought it is fully photoshopped. When she kicks asses, it is just great to watch! There are many horror scenes to feed you till you are full. Hehe!

A must watch from me especially in the cinema! The sound effect and the big screen will serve the movie its full potential and you will have enough excitement before you even noticed that the movie is coming to an end. I am looking forward to the next one!

MY FIRST SELF-BOUGHT BIBLE!




I took the 'holy' step to buy my very own bible for the first time in my life! No, I am no way a holy person but I do have curiosity to understand the bible better. I saw my uncle giving one to my sister and so I decided it is time for me to get a bible for myself.


Thus, I went to buy the NIV Student Bible, Revised, Compact Edition (Hardcover) a month or two ago. Finally don't have to go to church to borrow their bible for every service. Haha!


Since joining the Boys' Brigade as a primary school kid, it has always been my parents who bought me the bible. I wish to get a bible which makes self study easier with explanations and informations everywhere. Thus, I choose this student bible.


I heard a lot about Philip Yancey, 14 million of his books sold worldwide, making him one of the best-selling evangelical Christian authors. He was the other reason why I decided to buy this bible. It will be good to have good authors to give you easy to understand explanations.


AMAZON

THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM

Since The Bourne Supremacy, we waited 3 years for the final sequel. I always like the first one which is The Bourne Identity. This final part is not bad by itself. Finally, we can see a conclusion to all the runnings all over the planet! Like I said in the DieHard movies, Bourne has the same kind of situation. However, his is even worse since he is wanted by everybody. Both work alone in their missions mostly. I won't release any spoilers here but if you are a fan of the earlier two parts of the movie, you will not be disappointed by this final ending.

Many movies have bad endings and you always get a really sour finishing that you wished will be better. Most of the time, they try to hurry everything to rush the ending. For me, this one ended on a high and with the right pace! I will just give a bit more info here. Operation BlackBriar, which is an upgrade to Project Treadstone will be revealed completely and Bourne will remember and regain his full memory in the end. He is still unstoppable.

Must watch from me!

LIZARDS AND ANTS

My current rented place in a semi-detached house has lots of lizards and ants. I am trying to buy those 'poison' and traps to catch them. I see how effective they are to combat these insects. Most of the time, lizards will just crawl around ceilings and walls and we won't bother about them. However, the lizards in the house will crawl down the floor in a group of 3-5 to find food. This is getting ridiculous and they are extremely bold. The ants also are bold, attacking any food left there like for 5 minutes. It is extremely troublesome especially when you want to prepare food to cook.

You see, my room has a balcony and we cook at the balcony because I rented a room at the upper floor. The lizards are always very bold in wondering around on the floor and even table at the balcony. The toilet is not spared too. It is time to get rid of them since it does start to look very unhygienic to cook in such circumstances.

Do you guys have any great methods to scare them off that you tried before?

INCREDIBLE MACHINE

How do you react when you know that you will be handling a computer with hardware specifications below soon?

2X Quad-Core Intel(R) Xeon(R) X5355 (2.66GHz), 2X4MB L2 Cache, 1333MHz FSB processor
4GB 667MHz ECC Quad-channel DDR2 Fully Buffered DIMM memory with riser
2X Nvidia Quadro FX5600 1.5GB graphics card
30" UltraSharp(TM) Wide Screen Flat Panel Hi-Color LCD Monitor

Me? I will be speechless...

FOOTBALL: CHAMPIONS LEAGUE SO FAR

It looks like most of the clubs are bringing in their league form into the Champions League as well.

Arsenal, Manchester United, Chelsea won but Liverpool lost.

Barcelona, Sevilla won, Real Madrid drew and Valencia lost.

Inter Milan won, Lazio drew, Roma and AC Milan lost.

Lyon continue to lose and so are Werder Bremen.

It is just weird not to be able to see Bayern Munich in the Champions League. Well, Milan's form have been really bad lately but we should never discard them off completely. Last season was a good evidence and reminder of how their form could change so drastically. As the fortunes of Barcelona continue to improve, we see a more dangerous Messi everyday. His form is as good as Fabregas that they decided to employ a personal bodyguard for him. Fabregas and Messi are the reasons behind their clubs' great form. As for Real Madrid, their defence continues to be shaky eventhough they bought so many defenders. They have to start solving it or else, they will start suffering from defeats.

Inter's season looking fine so far but like how the past had always prove, they just don't have the consistency. We shall see as it progresses. Whatever it is, Ibrahimovic is on form and it is great to see Figo still playing like how he always is. As for Sevilla, their striker Kanoute is the man of the moment, banging in goals like there is no tomorrow. As for Chelsea, it is back to normal again for them seeing Drogba and Cole on the scoresheet. Manchester United have not been able to score a lot of goals lately but at least they are winning and their prized asset, Rooney is scoring.