清明节 - Tomb Sweeping Day

Observed the Qing Ming festival for the first time, last Sunday. My late grandma was buried at Nilai Memorial Park (孝恩园), and it's quite a nice place on normal days. During this Qing Ming period (especially on weekends), it is expected to be chaotic...



many many cars trying to squeeze in


serenity on the outer side of the park


trees lining the path near the entrance


burning of offerings to the deities


There's a certain sequence of events that we had to follow. Offerings to the deities first in the temple just after the entrance, then only to the tomb.

We had a hard time finding the tomb as the usual path was blocked due to too many vehicles in the compound. After turning round and round and getting stuck over and over again, we finally reached after 1.5 hours. The place had workers on hand who would fetch half-cut tin barrels to burn the offerings, and also big umbrellas to shade us from the sun.

There was a family near us that had like more than 20 boxes of offerings stacked up to burn. That's quite impressive!

At the tomb area, it was stated no photography but I saw some people still whipped out their video cameras and proceeded to capture the event!



chrysanthemum


My aunties prepared food, some bought and some home-made, fruits and all these are part of the offerings, besides the paper offerings that we burnt. After we're done, it was time to go home.

There was still alot of cars in the compound and getting out is no easy feat! Because there were so many cars, the sun was burning hot and there was a perpetual snaking queue and cars not moving, some drivers got impatient and tried to manouvre their huge cars in tight or near impossible corners. I saw one that scraped the side rear of another stationary car! And the culprit just went off... sigh.. humans tsk tsk...


Read more about the origins of the Qing Ming festival.

awww.. so cute!

A nameless puppy! My cousin's daughters' (are they my nieces?) pet. A 2 months old puppy with no name. Haha


awake and alert



tired...




They say she's a cross breed between chihuahua and poodle (?!) Is this combi even possible??

beautiful flowers

During my Japan trip, our hotel was located quite near the MRT. Every morning, we would walk from our hotel and cross the street towards the MRT.

One of the things that we often noticed was the trees or plants or flowers along the sidewalk. Along the cemented ground, there would be spaces allocated for flower beds. Lionel my young travelling companion once commented, "Wah.. the flowers so beautiful!" :)

On one particular cold morning, as usual we came out of our hotel, and walked along the street towards the MRT. Just then, there was this lady walking her dog. Our paths crossed and the lady and her pet dog stopped just right at the beautiful flower patch. Her dog smelled the plants a little and decidedly lowered its buttock and began dropping its poop onto the flower bed. I nudged Lionel and said, "That could be the reason why the flowers grew up so beautifully.."

Perhaps in life, sometimes we need shit to happen to serve as a catalyst for our growth...

fish & chips

Apparently, 2010 is the 150th year of fish & chips. Whoa.. 150 years, sound like a long long time, doesn't it? Wiki did list the year it started as possibly between 1858 or 1863.

Began in United Kingdom as a working class meal, it was said that Joseph Malin (Jewish proprietor) was the first to open a fish and chip shop in London. Does it mean that fish & chips is a Jewish food? Probably fusion as 'chips' or deep fried potato apparently also made its debut around the same time. So someone decidedly to pair the fish together with the 'chips' and voila, a time surviving dish was created.

The British calls the fish & chips outlets as 'chippies' and apparently, it's a huge business that serves up 250 million and 350 million portions each year through its 10,500 outlets. Cool!

Fish is natural resource to them as Britain is close to the North Sea (so are Sweden, Denmark and Germany... but they didn't come out with fish & chips :P ). So think about it, what natural resources does Singapore has?

Imagine if we have laksa kiosks/stalls that dish out millions of portions every year, muahahhaa! I think that would be pretty sustainable as laksa uses cockles (see hum), and cockles can be reared in farms right? And they're said to grow on sh**, so that's in abundance, yes?

But I suppose the driving factor, could be the high prices of all other food dishes and yet there's this one dish that remains affordable, so naturally people will be drawn to it. Of course, it has to be tasty too!


Sources of info:
msn news
wiki

porridge

dinner for tonight


clam porridge with crab meat n egg


made from these clams


Looked ok, but then not quite the taste that I wanted... well, for one the stock wasn't as nice 'coz one of the ikan bilis cube expired so cannot put. Then the crab meat also tasteless.. should've bought surimi instead haha. But luckily have the fried dough fritters... yumz

thai express

Had lunch at Thai Express, so took a couple of pictures...





Mr R's beef noodle soup


beef.. lump?


this is ze stick noodle u know....

But the beef broth quite nice...




Adeline's tomyum glass noodle.. with the noodles hidden from view.. aiya, difficult to photograph everything white white!


there's really noodles underneath the soup!


accessorize with straw mushroom and parsley.. but it felt limp 'coz Adeline got too tired holding this up for pic, so she rested it against the bowl...



HS's tang hoon with chicken balls


meat galore


half bitten



seafood green curry with rice.. oops, forgot to wipe clean the fork after prodding it into the curry!



alot of potatoes


i actually thought the potatoes were pineapples!

home cooked eats

My sis likes to cook pumpkin for some time now. The dish is quite delectable and is steamed, so it's less sinful than fried stuffs!


Here are some simple steps to cook a nice steamed pumpkin chicken. Oops, forgot to mention the ingredients but then WYSIWYG! Here goes:

1. pumpkin
2. chicken meat
3. tomato
4. salt, sugar
5. flour
6. chinese rice wine
7. sesame oil (little bit)
8. ginger
9. oyster sauce
10. plum

Preparation:

1. Wash everything.

2. Shred some ginger.

3. Cut the pumpkin and tomato into chunks and marinate with some salt. Set aside.



4. cut chicken into chunks



5. Pour some oyster sauce. Mix ginger on chicken and drizzle some sesame oil over the chicken




6. Pour little bit of chinese rice wine



7. Add a little salt, a little sugar



8. Sprinkle some corn flour



9. If you want nicer color, add some dark soy sauce as well

10. Mix well



11. Squeeze and break plum over the chicken




use this kind of plum

12. Pack everything and leave inside the fridge for few hours.




Cooking:

1. Place the pumpkin and tomato chunks on the bottom of the dish, and chicken meat on top

2. Steam for about 10-15 mins

3. Garnish with parsley


End result should look like this:






Have fun cooking!

the good stuffs

ta dah!


bird nest!


Conclusion is bird nest do taste a whole lot like agar agar!

travelling by train

Ever travelled by train? I mean the choo choo train and not the MRT haha!

If not, here are some pics to sort of convey that experience...



waiting for train to arrive...


throngs of people trying to board the train


early birds... catches the train??


what luck to get a foggy window...


Otherwise, wouldn't wanna miss scenaries like this...


blue blue sky




raging river?


if look carefully at the dots above the roofs.. those are actually birds flying ard! oops.. it's only visible when the image is in 2816 x 2112.. haha!


But most of the time, you'd probably see this instead...


plantations


open fire burning... now u know what contributed to some of the haze...



thought this was interesting, but din turn out quite like what i expected... what do u expect? only split sec to take the shot coz train was moving!



the sun was setting on the other side (other ppl's window..) so i had to be content with just the reflection....


Kajang station


The pics here were taken from Singapore to Kajang and also vice-versa.