him heang vs loong fatt - tausarpiah contest

penang him heang's tausarpiah is famous. even people from singapore know about it. they have been trying to get some for the last two times when they were in penang. but the first time, they went on a sunday, it was closed on sunday. the 2nd time they went at 5.30pm, it was closed after 5pm. and this time they went on wednesday at 4.13pm after nearly missed this mansion-like chinese cookie shop in burma road. last minute check on blackberry found the address and made their day. they paid for 4 packets and had to wait for 20 minutes in queue to get them, freshly from the oven. all that hype, the proof was in the pudding, or in this case "tausarpiah". the filling is more moist, unlike the normal ones which is quite powdery and dry, but same as the normal ones, over-poweredly garlic-laced. fragrant because it has lard. the shape is bite-size, like a small ball.

compared with the most famous tausarpiah in singapore the loong fatt tausarpiah in balestier road - he liked the singapore one, no garlic taste, the filling is paste-like, and sweeter, the shape is flattened, and bigger, good for a few bites. singaporeans like sweet things. for a lot of food as long as it's sweet, singaporeans would say it's good, though many times he doesn't think so. but for tausarpiah, he agrees with his countrymen for once.

singapore has a lot of number 1's; the best airport, the first erp, the most efficient gahmen, the most expensive civil servants, first nite-race F1, the most successful public housing implementation, probably has the least umployment(2%) and the oldest de facto dictator, and now

THE BEST TAUSARPIAH IN THE WORLD!

and soon,

the youngest mp(tin peiling)!

qingming - rain and wine

it was raining, not big this morning....
arrived in kubang semang graveyard at 8am. since it's a week day, only a few people came out to tend the graves and pay respect to their ancestors.

for him, maybe this was the first time he came out to tend his father's grave and pay respect to his soul in the qing ming period for as many years he had passed away.
they asked somebody to cut the grass on the tomb, and started burning the joss-sticks and candles and spread out the fruits and kuey offerrings. after burning the 'paper ingots' they left for their mother's tomb some few hundred yards away in the same graveyard.

they had the man top up the soil that's being eroded away. they spent an hour there. then they moved to prmtg sintok to visit the tomb of their uncle who passed away more than half a century ago.

the tombs there's were not with proper structures, each only with a tombstone infront of a small dune of lose earth.

they had the ceremony and left around 11.19am - too early for wine.

as the poem goes:

Du Mu's poem (simply titled "Qingming"):

清明时节雨纷纷 qīng míng shí jié yǔ fēn fēn
Qingming comes with incessant drizzles
路上行人欲断魂 lù shàng xíng rén yù duàn hún
the passers-by look disenchanted
借问酒家何处有 jiè wèn jiǔ jiā hé chù yǒu
asking for direction to the wine-hole
牧童遥指杏花村 mù tóng yáo zhǐ xìng huā cūn
Xinghua village remotely, points a cowherd

bm - one nite in

bm, bukit mertajam, a small town, not so familiar, althouogh been here a few times, but did not spend any time to checking teh town out. arrived there at 10pm and found a hotel in the town centre - summit hotel, only double superior rooms left - one nite for rm178. quite a big room, although the whole corridor was filled with the stench of cigarette smoke, the room also with some remaining scent of the smoke, it was still bearable. after check in, they had supper at dimsum city, somewhere in kampung baru. it's a hawker centre, quite a few stalls selling various foods. he ordered char koay teow with duck egg. good stuff. after supper, they went to the old town, around the temple, where there's another hawker centre, to buy some kueys for tomorrow's cheng-meng offer, before calling it a nite.

exciting - humble

you feel so small when you look at these masterpieces. talents are all over - the eyes, the techniques, the imaginations and the camera has to be one of the most expressible means for a lot of people....

normanton park - weekend blue

the guard at normanton park was righteously indignant after knowing he wanted to pass thru the estate to go to the pond at the back to take pictures. he denied him entry. he re-routed by the science park and reached the pond. the tranquility at once overwhelmed him. no matter how many times he had visited the place before, every time he wonders why he did not come here more often. just a handful of people - less than 10 came by.... that's the beauty of it, such a nice place, yet just a few know and care to appreciate its beauty. he himself has not visited the place for one year - ie he comes here probably once a year. there's 52 weeks. every week 20 people(10 on sat and 10 on sunday)come. one year there would be 1040 people visiting this place. say singapore has 5 million people, there should be 1/5(1 million) of the people who falls within 20-60 years old who would be interested in this place, if this 1 million visit the place once a year. there should be 1 million people - divide by 104, should have 10,000 per sat/sun, not 10 people. even a nice park like kentridge park does not see that many visitors. not even holt park. what are the people doing during weekends?

dinner - the old and the young

the rubber king, dr chee, the civil servant mr chai and the math/computer wizard, dr the honored for being awarded the distinguished alumni of NU. dr chee is world-known expert in rubber trees, even had a rubber tree decease named after him. mr chai a long-time civil servant was very humble, dr teh did not attend.

this year, the attendees of the function were less, some regular big shots did not turn up. but there's more youngsters joining the committee making paving a broad path for succession.

there's this guy mr loh, some big shot in a car company who bot up the remainder 10 copies of the chinese poem book authored by mr chung, an alumni phd in geography. he stood up in stage and the mc, the affable dr leong threw him a very brunt question: "we want to know why you were kicked out of the school?" he looked a bit tipsy, said in a rough voice, " i was kwai-lan, that's what the discipline master said - GAN NI CHU XIAO. the word xiao, he imitated the intonation of the then discipline master mr yie, it sounded like SPERM.....

mr lim, one of the two oldest alumni stood on the stage to sing his hockkien and cantonese song. he went over to him to greet him. he had already forgotten about last-year's occasion when they were sitting at the same table and talking in his native cantonese sunwei dilect. but he's still very affable and alert.

the two lady singers were good.

the dinner felt like ended a bit early, but it was already approaching 11pm.

feeding time - to eat or not to eat

when you are given a choice
your preference prevails
for a kid
it depends very much
on his mood on that moment
and as always
he would want to exert his power
over the maid
over the mother
over whoever letting him
to have his way

how to discipline a kid
a $6million question

with a 6-word answer:

do not force him to eat.....

.......let him ask for it.

durian season - run

bot 7 packets of durians for $30. thot the seller was saying for $20. but counted the change later, only $20, from a $50 he gave.

ate more than one packet after dinner. the whole body heated up. the sleep was not deep. this morning, did a 30-min threadmill, to sweat out the calories.

after berakfast ate again, one packet.

a golden fly - romancng the flower

the cleverer one is
the more romantic one gets
the less cleverer
the most the romance
how so?

romance vs cleverness is parabolic
like a woman's breast
the blonde has the fullest

cat - stray

how it mingles among human
and how it earns its keep
you wonder
why people
keep cats
and let them
go....

recruit - some training

the recruit - a way of training someone for war.

also a way to toughen one's physique and mental disposition.

war is something nobody wants, but everybody has to get prepared.

no matter how peaceful the place seems.

no matter how advanced you are in your defence.

somewhere, somewhat, someone is eyeing for that something that you have, that somehow will trigger a war.

port dickson - economic tsunami

it would be an otak-otak for dinners for the coming week.

they stopped over in yong peng to pick up their order of otak-otak order earlier on, en route back to singapore after a 3-day-2-nite tour to port dickson.

a group of them spent their days in the golf courses, the pd golf and country club and royal palm spring golf club.

they started from singapore at 800am, went by the 2nd link, and had breakfast in gelang patah, had lunch in teochiew restaurant in malaca, reached pd about 2.45pm.

a group of 9 were dropped in the pd golf club, started T-off at 3pm, 3 in each flight. it was after some rain, the weather was just right for this 4.5-hour outdoor game. they finished 16 holes before the bus came and picked them up at 7pm.

they looked for a restaurant in pd..... found one with many people patronising, 9-li-siang seafood restaurant. the food was so-so.

after dinner, it was too late to do anything else, except heading back to the hotel, avilon hotel; batches of houses on concrete stilts extending into the sea along the beach.

port dickson has many hotels and resorts but a lot of shops are still left empty.... and many half built and deserted after the 97 asian economic crisis.

the natural tsunami has wiped many structures out in japan, like what the economic tsunami had done in malaysia.

libya - labia

france, britain and u.s. sent their fighters into libya to start bombing. and the war has started over in africa.

the pretext is to safeguard libyan citizens from gaddafi's reprisal for their rebellion. in fact it's a gamble by sarkozy and cameron to perk up their own reputation.

the arab league itself endorsed the u.n. resolution 1972, 1973 for the western coalition army to invade libya. is it saying that they want the western power to dismantle their own rules, since many of these countries are facing the same situation of protesting, uprisings and rebellions.

the western press has been adding fuel to the fire - taking a very biased stand, branding gaddafi as saddam hussein the 2nd. no matter what happens, they are happy that war breaks out, not in their own nations though.

but like iraq, whoever starts the war would bear heavy price.

and as for sarkozy, libya to him is like an exposed labia - he could not wait to give it a french kiss - for libya, it's the HOT kiss of fires from the french mirages.

china knew it's not wise to disrupt a passionate x-rated movie, that's why they just happy be a ring-side spectator - they did not veto the resolutions.

dinner - marathon

after having a few glasses, he bloated it all out.

"you know i had been eyeing her when i was primary 3. i was transferred from another school to mee-tou school, and she also transferred from an english school to mee-tou, and we were in the same class."

"she was always no. 1 in the class, me, no. 8th. although i already laid my eyes on her, but dared not approach her. then i went to hwa chong, she went nanyang. and we lost touch. then we both went to nanyang university, taking up science. by then i started to over-take her in studies and got the guts to asked her out in the pretext of studying together..... and then all was history....."

louise, in his 60's was very proud of the greatest conquer of his life - telling the story of how he courted her wife and came to total victory after 15 years.

the dinner was an unplanned event. they were supposed to go with group to eat somewhere near the pasar malam, 10 minutes from the hotel. but somebody scent something nice in the hotel cafe, and the other guy saw a lamp roasted whole on a skewer., so 6 of them decided to stay back in the hotel for the buffet dinner. and they ordered 2 bottles of red-wine to go with the food.....

tsunami - before/after

somebody forwarded this link:

tsunami - before/after

the scenes after the tsunami are just too horrid. wiped out much of everything on its path - lives, houses, cars, boats, farms.... but not the guilt they never admitted to......

morning - good, better, best

it's another morning - when the sun comes out. and things look good. better when you shoot them and do some post-processing......

best, if you were here to take them all in.

inflation - chip, CHEAP

'Inflation? Well... iPad 2 costs the same'

that's always the case for the semiconductor/electronic sector.

when he was in college, the lecturer told them, "why you want to be an engineer? you are going to work yourself out of job. radio transistor cost $100 ten years ago, and now, it's only $5..... the price of everything in this world has only one direction to go, ie UP, only the price of electronic commodities goes down over time."

now, he understood well what his lecturer was trying to say.

the question:

how do you keep reducing prices over time? isn't the cost of things going up all the time? dies, gold wire, substrate, equipment...... manpower, energy..... premises, transport.....

so they go to 12" wafer, 28nm channel-length technology, copper wire, wafer-level packaging, multisite testing...... go to china, to vietnam.... g

how long can it go on like this?

for as long as it's chip - CHEAP!

normal day - quite a nite

the day sometimes does not belong to you. to him. just the other day, his mind went berserk.digging at some very imaginary stuff. regretted over it later on.

suddenly he asked her, "are you busy these days?"

"yap, working quite a lot on the garden, taking care of taxes...."

"why you didn't bother about what i told you to do?"

"what's that?"

"....."

like a nuclear reactor under an earthquake, it blew with very toxic radiations all over, all over their calm, uneventful nite.

now, if that's what has been the case for any normal day, then there's more normal days to come.

vivitar - quite some star

using the vivitar mf 28-200(macro)for some "serious" shots.... appreciate the macro(1:4) good for flower and fruits and bigger creature shots....