Baby's Full Moon Celebration

Chinese people now mostly still celebrates new born baby's first full moon. They usually presents friends and relatives with traditional pulut rice or nasi kunyit, hard boiled eggs where the shell are dyed in red, and angku kuih as well. Some people even "modernized" the event by replacing these dishes with food vouchers, roast chicken, cakes, biscuits etc. However, the most popular choices are still the traditional dishes.
Most people nowadays do not know that the angku kuih represents the gender of the new born baby. Traditionally, there are 3 types of angku. The first is the one that we usually saw as offerings for paying, that shaped like a red turtle ("ang" is red while "ku" turtle in hokkien). To know whether the baby is a girl, there will be some peach-shaped angku accompanying the normal angku, while for baby boy, it is a round-shaped angku. Though there are in different shapes stuffing of all these angku is the same :P. Angku is nice to eat as it is. My favourite is to keep the angku in fridge for one day, then pan-fried it.
My mother-in-law says that there's another way to determine the gender of the new born baby, that is whether the rice is normal nasi pulut or nasi kunyit, but can't really remember which is which as nowadays lots of ppl like to mix these up based on preferences

Public Safety - No Longer Safe

In the newspapers recently, there are many articles that seems to complain about our policemen's efficiency and attitudes when handling cases. I had my share with the bad case of how our public safety works during my trip to Cameron Highlands earlier. My hubby also shares with me his bad experience(s) with policemens last time (seems like then and now, there's no diff at all).
When people talks about the public safety here, everyone also has their own complaints. Even today my colleague complained about policemen's bad attitudes when dealing with publics while making reports. Instead of showing their concerns to the case, they criticizes the victim, making them feels more miserable.
The police chief says one bad apple, does not mean the whole depts are the same. It's not that we want to stereotypes all policemens to be the bad apple, but so far, I have not encounter any "good" apple yet. My mother-in-law spoke of a "funny" situation where there was an on-going burglary in one of our neighbour's house. The house owner went out for dinner, and when they came back, they notice someone was in the house ransacking their stuff. They quickly called the police for help. The policemen came with their big guns. They asked the owner to open the door with their key, which they did. Then the policemen asked the house owner to go inside the house first, and they will follow later. The house owner was shocked, and said "you have guns, you should go in first lah...". How can the policemen with weapons, ask a normal civilian without any means to protect themselves, to go inside the house first and encounter the robber. It seems they are using the house owner as a shield to protect themselves instead.
However, we must also remember that it is also our own responsibilities to make our environment safe. We can't always rely on our public safety officers here. They may be underpaid, understaffed, or whatever "under" (who knows oh). There used to be tv ads to promote the public's awareness and relationship with the police force when i was small. Maybe it's time for them to start the ads again to gain public's trust and to buck-up themselves in order to prove to us that they are indeed reliable.

Trip to Cameron Highlands and the "Dangerous" event

I went to Cameron Highlands with some of my colleagues early May 2007, since most of use had never been there before. The four of us (all ladies) drove all the way up there from Penang via the new road exited from Simpang Pulai. We started our journey from my home at about 8.15am, ate breakfast at Autocity in Juru and reacjed Cameron at about 12.30pm. We managed to check in early at the hotel and proceed to sight-seeing after placing our bags in our rooms. Cameron was not as cold as we had thought it would be, at times i feel the temperature is almost the same as Penang. However, it is indeeda wonderfule place for taking photos, as the scenaries were exceptionally beautiful. Ofcourse, another plus was the cheap greens and strawberries that you can find almost anywhere in Cameron. We had our fair share of purchasing the greens, honey and strawberries.

We did encounter one event which i think we would remember for a very long time, not to mention that this event really makes me very disappointed at how our crime prevention in Malaysia works. Here's how the story goes...
I was driving the four of us were planning to go to Time Tunnel on our way back to hotel from Brinchang. We saw a big signboard on the right side of the road, indicating 150m to our destination. Moments later, we saw another small signboard at the left side of the road, followed by a left turn which had a very big gate opened. Thinking it is the way to go to our destination, we make a left turn. We then notice that it was a dead end, and make a U-turn in order to exit the area. Then we saw one malay guy was closing the gate which leads to the main road. We drove up behind the guy, thinking that he will open the gate for us. Instead, the malay guy proceed to close the gate and even lock the gate with a padlock and kept the key. We told him that we need to go out, and he scolded us that we cannot make a u-turn here. Without listening to our explanations, he went inside his house, lock the door and close all the windows. We honked the guy few times but he never come out from his house.
There were a little girl playing in that area, which i think is also staying in that area as well, were trying to open the gate for us. When she notice that it had been locked with a padlock, she ran to the guy's house and asked him to open the gate. Again, the guy did not come out. We quickly called the emergency line (112) using our handphone. I told the lady operator that we were locked inside by one guy and gave our whereabout in Cameron Highlands, but the operator is unable to connect us to the Police station in Cameron Highlands. The lady says that the number is not updated in their system!!. Furthermore, the lady asked me whether Cameron Highlands and Genting Highlands is it the same area. It took the operator more than 5 minutes to finally get us thru the Police station. If the guy was serious at hurting us, it would have take less than that to do so, and our emergency line took us more than 5 minutes.
In the meantime, 2 of my colleague (Jennifer & WaiLin) came out from the car and went to the gate, trying to call people from the opposite of the road to help us. They were waving their hands high and low, but people who saw us from the opposite road ignored us. As i was talking to a policeman on the line, a lady staying in that area came out to see what happenned. She signalled us indicating that the guy was crazy and then called the guy to open the gate for us. Finally the guy opened the gate and we quickly drove out and parked at the side of the main road waiting for the police. All these events is about 10 minutes.
We waited for more than 1/2 hour by the road side but the police still never come. I called the police again, and they said it is on their way. Then we notice that the crazy guy was observing our car. After that, he took a long wood and was walking towards us. We quickly drove our car to the opposite shops where there were lots of people buying things. I then called the police again, saying that we do not want to wait anymore, then only a car approached us with 3 guy inside and it was the police car. The total waiting time was about 45 minutes. Again, if the situation were really dangerous, what would happenned to us then. We told the officers on what happenned. They then went to the place to investigate while we waited. The policemen came out moments later, and told us that they were unable to find the guy, and that they managed to talk to other people and they did not know what had happenned. Obviously they did not talk to the childrens running around there as well. The policemen suggested us to make a report at the police station for cover purposes, in case anything happenned to us later. We followed their car to the police station, and the trip is less than 5 minutes (and it took them more than 45 mins to reach us).
At the police station, there is one fat policeman who is supposed to take our report, but he seems unwilling to do so and kept saying it is our fault. We tried to explain to him, but it seems he cannot understand what we are trying to say (his english command is very poor and our malay command is also poor, like chicken talking to duck). He then send me to talk to his superior (En Sabri) and i explained everything him. The superior english was quite good and understands what i was saying. In the end, we did manage to complete our report but we were unable to receive a copy of it as they says it is their off day. A policeman (Sgt Wan) did call me later at night to clarify the issue and says that the guy that locked us in maybe crazy, and that he will checkout for us the next morning. We did not receive any more news after that. So you think they really do their work after that, or simply take our report just to silence us? God knows.

Honk if you are a Malaysian

I just completed this book few weeks back. From the reviews stated in the book cover and newspaper, it was a recommended read with lots of jokes and comments that we can relate to in our daily Malaysian life. But i feel that it's a bit waste of money (buying the book) and time for reading about things that we already know. Some of the chapters are too dry though some of the author's comments are quite memorable. What i like most of the book is in the last chapter where she writes about the political problem between Mahathir and Badawi, and about unfinished bridge that supposed to link between Malaysia & S'pore. The author did not directly point into such problem, but that chapter really put her storytelling skill into light.

My Cooking Adventure

My mother-in-law was not in last Sunday, so my hubby gave me an assignment to cook healthy meal for the whole day. On Saturday night i was scratching my head on what to cook, furthermore the only things that i know to cook confidently was maggi mee. Luckily i bought some cooking books last time, so it was time to put it into good use. Finally i decided the menu as follows:
1. scramble egg, toast and sausages for breakfast (make it american breakfast style...)
2. stir fried big prawns with cili padi (my mother's recipe :P)
3. cabbage soup with pork
4. fish fillet (fried lah of course)
5. stir fried green capsicum with straw mushrooms & chicken
Since i don't have much ingredients at hand, i ensure the portion is enough for both lunch and dinner (since for dinner i can just heat it up and no need to cook somemore.. haha..) Somemore i got help from my parents to buy some of the stuff that i need, since i nvr go to market b4 to know what is fresh & cheap.
For breakfast is easier to do lah, since just toast the breads and fry the sausages. For scrambled eggs, i cannot find any milk so i replaced with plain water instead (luckily my cooking instinct can work) and manage to get the same style & taste as what we see in Coffee Bean breakfast set :P. My husband give me an excellent pass!
Come to lunch, it was almost a tragedy!!. Only the prawns dish came out as what i had expected, and luckily taste just as nice. As for the soup, too little seasoning, the fish too much salt and bcome salty, green capsicum and mushroom was ok, just the chicken meat was cut of unequal portion, thus some is tender while some is hard :( My husband just complained on the chicken and soup (maybe he like salty fish??) and gave me an acceptable pass. My parents called me up to check on the cooking status, and laugh at me when they heard the results. My father was very supportive, and said he would like to eat what i cooked :) Really need to brush up my cooking skills already, so that can make my parents proud.

Malaysia and the Club of Doom

I would strongly suggest you to get this book. This book was written by a Muslim guy, and what he wrote about Islam and Malaysia is truly a wide-opening experience for me (thought i'm not sure what the other Muslims would feel if they were to read this book). Even the author himself suggested the mixed feelings that people would get when reading this book. Anyway, to start off he commented that Malaysia is heading towards doomsday due to misinterpretation of Islam among the muslims. Do read on the issues about dogs, tudung (headscarf) and islamic banking. He also criticizes on government with religion involved. One disappointment that i have is how could a book being published and sold widely in bookstores, could have so many spelling mistakes.

Rude taxi driver

With the launch of Visit Malaysia Year 2007, we would have thought that the service levels must have or at least improved in Malaysia to promote tourism. But this is not so during my trip to KL last weekend. We had just reached KL Sentral and engaged a taxi to bring us to our hotel thru the ticket counter. When we bought the ticket, we showed the sales person our luggage to determine whether extra charge is needed, and there are none as we only had one small hand-carry luggage. As we walked out from the building, the taxi driver approached us, look at the ticket and said the amount is not enough. He told us to store the luggage in the car boot and to pay him the cost of doing so. When we told him that the sales counter did not imply such need and we would want to hand-carry it, to our surprise he shouted saying that the sales counter do not knowing anything and insisting to store the luggage in the boot. We don't mind paying the extra charge, but the taxi driver should not treat his customer rudely. Another thing is that, during the whole trip to the hotel, the taxi driver kept honking at the other drivers and motorcyclist on the road. Can you imagine what kind of impressions this would give to visitors and tourist to our country? Bad bad service. And i was looking for a complaint form to fill in...