I bought this freakishly huge pomelo on a whim while grocery shopping last week. A friend of mine saw this in the produce section and said it looks larger than my head, which prompted the photo above. It really is larger than my head – by quite a fair bit. I have never seen such a gigantic pomelo before so I got it and its been sitting in the pantry ever since.
I am no stranger to pomelos – my maternal grandma had a pomelo tree in her yard and it seems that the damn things seem to fruit every single fucking day!
There will always be a bountiful harvest of pomelos, sliced and served on a plate whenever we went to visit. I hated fruits back then and I can’t say I’ve ever been a fan of pomelos since I was a kid. The bountiful harvest wasn’t to blame – my paternal grandma had a mango tree and I loved mangos. I still do.
The problem with pomelos is that it has a tart and bitter taste that didn’t agree very much with my youthful taste buds back then. I would eat it but not on its own.
…but why are we talking about pomelos anyway?
Well, coz the damn thing has been there for almost a week, taking up space and I’m looking for a recipe to use it in.
I travel around quite a bit. I tend to season my vacations with a healthy sprinkling of adventure since I’m a huge adrenaline junkie. I’ve gone bungee jumping, skydiving, snowboarding, and cliff jumping in various parts of the world and I pronounce it GOOD. 🙂
However, it’s not just the things that raises your heart rate that appeals to me – I love immersing myself in culture and experiencing new things. That is adventure to me as well – novelty seeking and wanderlust.
I often find myself planning for the next trip as soon as I come back. I’m pretty sure that I’ll be off somewhere when you’re reading this.
Hell, I’m going on a road trip tomorrow and another one this weekend so chances are I’ll not be at home. The wanderlust is never sated in me. 😀
I update a lot while I’m away as well (much to the chagrin of my wallet) – anything from the usual social media suspects to sending an MMS of Stonehenge to my bff. Yes, I actually did that.
You know how data roaming can be a bit tricky at times?
I’ve got a question for you:
1. You’re in Australia using your postpaid line to stay connected on Twitter, Facebook and your blog
2. There is a 3 hour time difference and you’re flying off early tomorrow
3. When do you deactivate it?
I’ve always wondered – do you get charged for another day when the clock strikes 12 midnight in Malaysia or Australia local time?
It’s a Cinderella conundrum and something I plan to find out once and for all with Hotlink’s Prepaid Data Roaming. They’re the first in Malaysia to offer international data roaming while you’re on work or vacation somewhere else in the world. They’ve got 150 countries covered and counting!
I reckon it’ll be very useful while traveling. You know how much I love doing that.
Hotlink is running a contest called Bloggers without Borders where bloggers are divided into three categories – Food, Adventure and Fashion and we’ll get the chance to go to Manila, Bali and Bangkok respectively.
However, we have to earn that privilege and here’s where you come in. 🙂
Vote for me and suggest an activity you would like me to do. I’ll be heading down to Bali so there’s a lot of water sports going on there.
Here’s my video. I had a lot of fun doing it – enlisted the help of a random stranger who wanted to borrow my phone coz he forgot to bring his, behind-the-scenes stuff, driving with no hands (don’t try this at home) and other shenanigans.
I even got a haircut before making that video. 😉
I’ll be constantly updating and will be in touch if I get chosen to go to Bali so vote for me! I promise you, I’ll be game to do anything. Heh! There isn’t much I wouldn’t do actually.
Want me to jump of a plane without a chute and do a tandem harness in midair? Just ask me to. (Really, please, I would love to do this)
Want me to jump off a cliff? Yes, sir! (or ma’am)
Trust me, if you vote for me, you’ll get the chance to ask me to do stuff and see me tweet, Facebook and blog using Hotlink’s Prepaid Data Roaming JUST FOR YOU. No one else will be as fun and adventurous as me so you might as well get your friends to vote for me as well. 😉
It was an unfortunate GPS navigational error that ultimately brought us to this place in Selayang – some 20 km away from our original intended destination of Ulu Yam. Christy was talking about the fabulous Ulu Yam loh mee and I chose the first result that came up.
Thus, we totally missed Ulu Yam Lama and headed into Selayang instead. Oh well, at least the names kinda rhyme. This coffee shop is adorned with a banner that proclaims its dedication to Ulu Yam loh mee (with that dastardly entry in the GPS echoing its wares).
Anyway, since we were there, we decided to order the loh mee (RM 5). It comes in a HUGE bowl – the portion is pretty generous but there’s only two shrimps and other miscellaneous bits of meat inside. The soup is nice and starchy though and a dash (or a pour in my case) of vinegar does wonders to the taste.
The bottle of vinegar does not have a volume reducer (or whatever you call that doohickey) so I think I emptied near 50 ml of the stuff into my bowl but it’s all good – the loh mee portion is huge enough to diffuse all that vinegar. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that it tastes just right – much like how Baby Bear’s bowl of porridge must have tasted to the home invading Goldilocks.
However, the best thing about Restoran Soon Yuan is their herbal tea. It’s RM 1.80 and is brewed with chrysanthemum, luo han guo and dried longans. It’s surprisingly refreshing!
Unfortunately, the loh mee is only serviceable (although I ate the entire bowl) and it’s missing a key ingredient – deep fried pork lard. The definitive Ulu Yam loh mee is here, according to Kim. I’ll have to head down to Ulu Yam Lama someday to taste authentic Ulu Yam loh mee.
This place lists the rather promisingly named African Fried Rice on its menu though.
I remember back when I was studying in Christchurch, NZ it became something of a trend to call “shotgun” if you want the front seat beside the driver. I know, it sounds silly but we were all 15 back then (with some older kids) and 15 is the age when you can get your driver’s permit over there.
Anyway, there are RULES to calling shotgun – you can’t do it, say, as soon as you exit a car. I can’t remember all of them but basically a valid shotgun call is when everyone is heading off and you’re actually in the car park.
Well, it was during those high school years that I first started taking KLM for Singapore – New Zealand flights. I had to to spend the night in Changi when I came back coz it was cheaper to transit in Singapore than KL.
I have been to a lot of places since then including two sojourns to Europe earlier this year. The last Europe trip I went on was basically a backpacking trip, from London all the way to Latvia and Georgia. The only place (besides London) that I visited twice in a row was Amsterdam. I love the city and all it has to offer! 🙂
Well, KLM is the national airlines of the Dutch and they’re having this awesome contest where you can win a trip for two to Jakarta. The mechanism is pretty simple – it somehow reminded me of my adolescent shotgun anecdote.
I swear this has gotta be the best contest ever. It’s not a popularity contest so everyone gets an equal chance. It’s more like a lottery!
(except with WAY better odds)
Basically, you have to Like the KLM Malaysia Facebook page and wait for the game to start. Once it begins, you’ll be able to see 1-3 planes. Each plane has 400 seats and ONE of those seats is the winning ticket. The Golden Ticket if you will…
…and if you happen to be lucky enough to tag that particular seat, well, you’ll be like Charlie and off to the destination you’ll go, courtesy of KLM. You’ll get to bring along a friend as well!
Now who’s gonna turn down a trip for two – especially if there’s a myriad of destinations to choose from. It’s as easy as it comes, kinda like playing Bingo, except again with better odds. 😉
I just came back from a road trip to Bukit Tinggi (also called Berjaya Hills) with Christy, Hollie, Nic and Patricia. We headed up Monday morning and spent the night at the French medieval themed resort.
It seems that Colmar Tropicale has been around for quite a while and the last time I came here was during my birthday.
This time around it was supposed to be a very chill and relaxing trip and I think we spent the most time fishing for ducks (and eating). Heh.
Christy booked one of the regular rooms and I was bunking with her while the other 3 squeezed into another room.
Some of them went to sleep as soon as we got there but me and Christy started watching TV and talking instead.
Lunch at Ryo Zantei @ Japanese Gardens. Most of us had the Ten Zaru Soba (RM 29) coz the weather was rather hot. It’s cold soba with tempura and soy dressing topped with…
…a raw quail egg.
Lovely.
Walking around the Japanese Gardens. A lot of people come up here to rent kimonos and have the Japanese tea ceremony that it’s become a bit of a cliché.
Tea time pastries at La Boulangerie.
There was this duck pond full of yellow ducks with hooks which you “fish” with a pole. We spent the better part of an hour and about RM 50 trying to get a duck with a winning number on it.
The fruits of our labor. One tiny stuffed toy.
It was a lot of fun though and it’s surprisingly hypnotizing to watch the fake ducks swirl around the plastic inflatable pond.
Dinner at La Flamme.
Drinks at Le Vin. Notice all the French names? We ordered a bottle of wine to share before finally retiring to the room.
I think me and Christy was the last ones to sleep – we spent the night in bed talking about all sorts of stuff…like long distance relationships back in your grandparent’s days where they had no technology. Heh.
Singapore Food Trail is located below the Singapore Flyer and aims to bring all the best hawker food in Singapore to one place. It’s kinda like the Lot 10 food court in KL – the crème de la crème of hawker food all represented in a single place.
The setup in Singapore Food Trail has a lot of paraphernalia from the good ol’ days to better set the ambiance. There’s also an al fresco area for those who prefers to eat their food in a more authentic setting.
I was pretty parched when I got there so I ordered a Bird’s Nest Drink for SGD 2.50. You can have it hot or cold and the large one comes in that huge tin mug your grandma drinks tea out of (or at least my grandma did) so it’s a pretty generous serving.
There’s a lot of tempting food around but I settled on High Street Tai Wah Pork Noodle. It has the longest queue of all the stalls and I reckon that if it’s so popular, I might as well try it. The people in front of me all ordered the pork noodle with broth (SGD 5) which is their flagship dish.
I’m not a big fan of soup dishes though so I went with the dry option. I also upsized it to medium for SGD 7. The dry pork noodle is exactly the same as the one with broth, except they seperate the soup into another bowl so it doesn’t saturate the noodles.
The Tai Wah pork noodle broth is really something to behold. You can see the quality of the soup with your naked eye – it takes a lot of boiling to get the marrow and nice bits out of pork bones and it makes the soup really good. I wished I had ordered the regular version, I wanted more of the soup.
The pork noodles is awesome too – it has most parts of the pig inside it and the noodles are nicely flavored with a slightly spicy sauce. There’s pork wantons, pork belly, pork meat balls, pork liver and even a sprinkling of dried cuttlefish. The dried cuttlefish is ingenious – it adds texture and flavor as well as a break from all the porcine goodness in the noodles.
It’s goes very well with a cold Tiger on a hot Singaporean afternoon. Gotta drink the local suds when you’re there. 🙂
Well, there’s something to be said about starting your day by leaping off a plane 14,000 feet in the air.
Skydiving first thing in the morning followed by some sea kayaking action. I have to admit, I was probably the first one up and went knocking to wake some others that day. We were certainly the first boots on ground at the meeting point at the hotel lobby. Heh!
I was still half asleep when I signed the indemnity form.
The Tourism NSW and AirAsia X people were kind enough to see if they can get me into a custom solo AFF since I’ve been through the course before but unfortunately, it was too late. They only have tandem packages on the regular menu, so we all got into the tandem skydive at 14,000 feet (highest you can go in Australia) courtesy of Skydive Byron Bay.
I didn’t film myself coz I had gone through all these before but Alycia did so look at her video to see what it’s like! She also wrote about her experience here.
It was a lot of fun for me since I haven’t skydived in Byron Bay before (and certainly not in autumn) but it gave me this idea about jumping out of a plane without a parachute.
Have you seen the video?
There’s actually two people who has done it before and contrary to popular belief, you don’t just need to have balls of (forged) steel to do it. You’ll need some training as well, so you can maneuver and not slam into the other person in midair.
That would probably involve a lot of dying since most people pass out when they crash into each other in midair at terminal velocity and thus would be unable to deploy their chute, much less do a tandem harness in the sky.
This is the second person to do it, I thought it was technically more difficult than Travis’ first attempt.
Terminal velocity is around 195 km/hour (it changes depending on how you shape your body and other variables – you can go faster, that’s how a person who exits the plane after you can catch up) and we got to experience that for about 60 seconds but I was talking to our driver and she happens to be getting her license so I told her I wouldn’t mind jumping out of a plane without a chute when she’s gotten her license.
I was being totally serious btw.
Won’t it be the ultimate rush? You’re just depending on someone else’s chute and there’s so many things that can go wrong before you hook up and do the harness. It’s mind-blowing.
The mere fact that it’s mind-blowing means I have to try it. 🙂
Anyway, we headed out for lunch after that in a bright and sunny cafe (with one opt out from being sick from skydiving) – there’s nothing like having buttermilk pancakes with fresh strawberries and bananas doused with honey with a side of smoked salmon that’s equivalent to an entire family packet to get some energy for sea kayaking…
…which is exactly what we did that same afternoon, to spot dolphins and whales in the sea. I was supposed to pair up with Ringo but she can’t swim and I’m not a good kayaker so I teamed up with Alycia (who could swim) instead. I reckon it’s a great thing coz me and Alycia never overturned our sea kayak (everyone else did).
#winning
Sea kayaking requires you to power over the surf (this is the most difficult part) as you head out to sea – aligning your sea kayak in a directional wedge against the incoming tide so you can go over the waves and into the calmer seas after the break.
It was a lot of fun, just rowing in tandem with Alycia and getting past the rather large incoming waves and then paddling out to sea. I never did quite figure out how to make an emergency turn in the strong tides and I nearly had a hernia pulling the sea kayak back to shore after all that but it was more fun than a barrel of monkeys and Alycia turned out to be an excellent partner. 🙂
…so if you’re wondering just how fun a barrel of monkeys is, AirAsia X is having their Byron Bay & Beyond promotion for just RM 599 all in to Gold Coast now.
Christy is back for winter break! I met up with her for lunch at Plan B to catch up on things. I haven’t seen her since the last time she went back to Aussie so it was great to hook up again. I had a customized pasta last time I went to Plan B with Lainey bff so I decided on something a little easier on the stomach this time.
Ox tongue sandwich (RM 20)
This is a generous helping of ox tongue on an equally thick slice of bread.
The ox tongue is really good though and I love the mustard that came with it and the pickle on the side. I ate all the tongue in the sandwich, but I’m not a big fan of fries so I pretty much left it alone.
Eggs Royale (RM 16)
These are two poached eggs on muffins with slices of smoked salmon. I’m all for Plan B’s “all day breakfast” (there’s breakfast most of the day). I prefer the poached eggs on avocado and feta but Christy found this really good.
Plan B has pretty decent food but the service can be hit and miss – I mean, if you’re going to open an establishment in Bangsar Telawi, staff that speaks good English is a bit of a prerequisite, I reckon.
Anyway, Christy shared this idea about life that has really piqued my interest. I shall try and implement it to the best of my capacity too. Heh! It would sure be fun.
We headed down for drinks at The Social after that. There was a rather interesting encounter with this Indian fortune teller who read Christy’s palm and did some parlor tricks. Anyway, the dude was doing his scam, noticed him when I got out of the loo and asked Christy if she was okay. After a bit, I decided to tell him to leave and after trading a few expletives, he finally did.
It’s strange though, there seem to be more and more interesting characters turning up in the Telawi area. I love the place though, it’s close to where I stay and you can just hang around and drink in the afternoon. I only like it on weekdays though, it’s a bit too packed during the weekends.
Oh, and look what Christy got me from Melbourne! 🙂
She has convinced me that I need to go to Melbourne this year too. I haven’t been back in a long time and I do miss it. I suspect I’ll have to head to NZ before that though…family obligations.
Well, let’s cross that bridge when we come to it – July is coming up and it’s going to be a fun month for me! Let’s see how many trips I can squeeze into it. 😀
Yes, this is a branch of the renowned Singaporean frog leg porridge located in the more dubious part of the island. I’ve had the pleasure of eating at the original Geylang Lorong 9 frog leg porridge in Singapore and have been known to drop by their branch in Petaling Jaya a couple of times and I’ve always found that they cook up a consistently good frog leg dish.
I went there for a late lunch yesterday and ordered the medium kung pow frog leg claypot (RM 24). You don’t have to eat porridge if you don’t want to – there’s an option for rice as well, which we both went for. However, it should be noted that the awesome kung pow sauce goes better with porridge.
Anyway, I was telling Bonnie about how producers sell food at a higher price to supermarkets compared to restaurants coz the former needs to display their goods while the latter don’t. I remember watching a documentary where a restaurant owner was interviewed saying how supermarkets require better looking food items coz for display while restaurants can get away with the odd ones, since most of the cooking is done without the customer seeing it, but for the life of me I can’t remember exactly where I saw that show.
She sat there listening patiently until it dawned on me…it was actually her reporting assignment that I was watching a couple of days ago and that’s where I heard that fact. -_-
The Geylang Lor 9 Fresh Frog Porridge name is a bit of a misnomer since they don’t just serve the frog legs but the entire frog. It tastes really good though – frog meat is exquisitely tender and juicy – it’s like a cross between a fish and a chicken thigh.
I still prefer the original Singapore one though. I know they import their frog meat from Malaysia but it still tastes better to me. I suspect it’s the way they cook it – the flagship Singaporean Geylang Lorong 9 porridge place just has better claypot kung fu.
Order the fresh barley if you can’t take spicy food – their kung pow frog leg can be pretty intense.
A friend of mine has been staying over my place and I have watched with great interest as she works on her assignments. Well, it’s not her assignments per se but rather the energy that she has. I have almost forgotten what it’s like to be 22 again.
I remember having heaps of energy when I was in my early 20’s – would be partying and staying out most of the day.
Bonnie has just got this awesome belly piercing too. I was supposed to go with her but I was busy on that day so I didn’t. That’s one part I miss a lot too – just being impulsive and doing whatever I like.
Growing old is all part of life but all too often, I find myself tiring easily. I can’t kick it like I could when I was 8 years younger. I like the progression that being in my 30’s affords but hey, won’t you love it to be young again? 🙂
