Valentine Celebration 2011@The View

This Valentine we've decided to celebrate it as lunch since both of us were on leave on that day as well. Reasons so that we can spend time with William after nursery plus there's no need to deal with the crowds celebrating at night.

I've been wanting to try on The View restaurant at Equatorial Hotel, but most of the time ended up in Kampachi instead since we loves japanese food so much. This year being very persistent and "demanding" from my end, we finally step into The View.

The restaurant had already make preparations and decorations for Valentine celebration, with 2 cupids by the doorway and many lovely hearts hanging down from the ceiling inside the restaurant. They were serving semi-buffet lunch then, where the appetizers and desert are buffet style and we just need to select the main course from the menu provided. The prices varies from the main course selection.

Our waiter introduces to us the promotion of the month, which are dover sole at RM118 and duck trilogy at RM128. My hubby opted for dover sole, a type of freshwater fish reportedly imported from Australia, while I ordered the duck trilogy, which consists of duck confit, smoked duck breast and foie gras.

While waiting for the main course to arrive, we helped ourselves to the appetizer first. It has many choices of salads and cold cuts, plus fresh oyster as well. My hubby is not a fan for those but I enjoyed the fresh salad and oyster a lot. When we are done, the waiter brought us our minestrone soup. Again the soup is not to my hubby's liking as he's very much a meat-lover.

Next is the main course. With my duck trilogy, I first tasted the smoked breast, it was superbly juicy and tender. In fact it was the best duck breast I ever had in my record. The duck confit was well seasoned, crispy on the outside but soft on the inside. Nicely done as well. Foie gras was very soft and smooth, but I eat it heavy heartedly with the images of the fattened goose in my mind. As for the dover sole, it was so juicy and fresh. Each bite of the meat was a heaven. But since the whole fish itself was so big, plus there's 2 side of meat to be consumed, my hubby was having quite a hard time finishing it. In fact he do not have room for desert afterward. I was also quite full and only manage to eat some light desert.

Overall the food, environment and service was really worth the money. Will definately be persistent and demanding again in the future to try out other courses as well.

Onde-onde

I was talking to my mom the other day, when we chance upon an article in The Star newspaper about kuih making trades in Penang. There onward my mom was reminiscing the time when she was small and helping my grandma in making nyonya kuih. From there on only I knew that my mom knows a trick or two into making these wonderful treats.

I quickly make a date with my mom since I'm taking long leaves for CNY, asking her to teach me how to make onde-onde, one of my favorite kuih. She told me of the ingredients and off I went to Tesco to purchase the basic ingredients. I only manage to purchase brown sugar there. I was looking high and low for the glutinous rice flour but don't see any. My mom was a life saver when she said that she had plenty of those at home when I called her.

After I dropped William at the nursery, I went to meet my mom at the wet market to purchase coconut flakes. But the seller must still be in holiday mood since the stall did not open. We then had to improvise and make the flakes ourselves using electric blender with the matured coconut from my dad's coconut tree. With some screwpine leaves for its natural green coloring, and we are ready to go.

The method is exactly the same as making tang yuan ball, with addition of brown sugar as its fillings. In total we made 45 of them and I am quite happy with the results. Here's the photo that I've taken...

A True Legend

On the first day of CNY morning, as I was browsing thru the channels in Astro, I stumbled a documentary shown in History Channel about our legendary P. Ramlee. The show itself was already aired half-way but the title and the narration was really catching that I glued on to the tv.

It was a very heart-wrenching documentary, and it made me cry so badly. A legend known to all Malaysian, regardless of races, was rejected by the society and died in poverty. Regardless of so many amazing contributions he had given to the entertainment industry, nobody cared to support in his times of needs. In fact he was criticized and even booed at. He was very successful during his times in Singapore, winning numerous awards time over time. Returning to Malaysia to continue on his career was the beginning of his downfall due to lack of resources, technology and inexperienced people in Malaysia. Many can talk big but unable to act when need to. I guess some can relate to this even now.

Nowadays our government in trying to retain its talents within Malaysian shores, encouraging those overseas to come back. With P. Ramlee case as history to tell, it is hoped that it will not happen to those who came back in view of contributing back to the country.

P. Ramlee, you will always be remembered. A true legend to all Malaysians...

Hello 2011

This was supposed to be an early entry for this month, but with so many things going on here & there, it ended up being such a late entry :(

We did ended up 2010 with a new tradition introduced since 2009, a family karaoke gathering! Well, it was coincident with X'mas celebration as well. This round we went to Neway at QBM and booked a VIP room. The room itself can fit more than 20 people, and with attached toilet! A special thanks to my brother-in-law for organising and sponsoring this event.

William already started nursery school at since 3rd January this year. My mother-in-law was objecting this decision initially, saying that he's too young at only 26 months. But seeing how much improvement he had gained for the past weeks, she finally accepted it. However, William did cause a havoc on his first day. Running here & there, making things up-side-down. The first 3 days he was clingy but thereafter, he seems to be looking forward to go. The teacher there is doing very well compared to us in teaching him to speak new words. Even my hubby was tempted to sneak in the nursery to see how they do it.

Busy Life + Updates

I had been so busy lately for the past few weeks, but mostly with routine works. Nothing much interesting happenned, even if so I had forgotten what I had wanted to blog about.


Now there's one event which is our company trip that I wanted to post here but am still waiting for some of the photos to be available before I post it up.


William is still not talking, and acting very naughtily cute. He changes his behaviour like a on/off switch. One instant he's very good and co-operative, the next he's demanding and cranky. He's picky with food when at home but happily eat any foods prepared by my mom.

Anyway I realised for the past weeks, the traffic in Penang is getting worse by the days. No, not because of Puasa month, because it started happening even before Puasa started. Road hoggers & road bullies are everywhere! Some drivers are so clueless that when you had good intention to let them get pass you, it took them ages to move. Then there'll be many cars overtake them afterwards and they will stop for few seconds each time this happenned, and ended up getting us late to our destination. This just makes us think twice whenever wanting to give way to people. It is hard to find decent drivers nowadays...

Cute Moment

We need to be careful of what we are doing in front of our child, even when they are at very young age. William as of now is already 20 months old. He'll be 2 yrs old in another 4 months time, and by then off he goes to nursery. Just hope that he'll catch more good things rather than bad things while he's there.

Anyway, all these while whenever he wets the floor from his drinking water or milk, I used the nearest dry cloth I can find. And when he wets the floor in our room, the nearest grab was his clothes from the laundry basket. Sometimes he automatically used that help me dry up the floors too.

Yesterday, my mom told me that his cousin wets the floor from drinking water while playing. What William did was take off his pants and starts wiping the floor. After my mom changed his pants to a clean one, he takes it off and wipes the floor again when his cousin played with the drinking water the second time! I guess he must have thought that "wet floor = use own clothes". I will need to use a proper cleaning cloth from now on...

World Cup Craze - Not Me

World Cup 2010 has started and almost everywhere you can hear people talking about it. In restaurants, radio, TV, office, customers workplace etc. But there is one place where we will definately not talk about world cup and football, that is if we do not on the normal TV station at home :P
My hubby is definately not a football fan, so he don't watch football. The other guy in the family is just less than 2 yrs old, so he does not understand what the heck is football. Then left just my mother-in-law, who is glued to chinese and hokkien drama. So for us, lives goes on as per normal at home. But then it's a different story when we interact with the outside world. Everyone's eye is on the ball!