Stupid mistake

I did a very stupid mistake yesterday. When I was going out after my breakfast, I couldn't find my car key and home key. I kept on looking around my bag, my room and I still couldn't find them. What had happened? I had never lost my key like that.

After I refreshed back, an imagine crossed my mind. I remembered I put my keys on my car when I want to take back my clothes which were hang outside after landry.

Some of you must be puzzled, why did I need to take my car key as well? Haha.. I have a very special way of collecting my clothes. My hanger was just located right beside my car, so usually I'll open my car door, collect my clothes and throw in all my clothes in while I am collecting the other clothes so that I do not need to take anything to put my clothes in! I'm brilliant right? Wahaha.. then after finish collected, I will use my towel to wrap up all the clothes so that I can bring my clothes easily.

Well, I did the same yesterday, but I follow with a stupid mistake. I left my keys outside overnight!!! Luckily no theft noticed about it, or else I don't know what to do if all things in the house missing. Ok, back to the topic, now my problem was, I was being 'locked' in my house!! All people had gone out for work! How??

At that time I remembered I had a spare key which I neglected it long long time ago. But, I remembered one of the keys cannot be used as it was not well duplicated and it was not able to unlock the lock! Well, just try my luck. I was praying that the key for opening my door in the house was functioning.

So, geuss what happened next? Ya, I was lucky enough, my key was functioning. God bless me. I was able to escaped from my house and went to work.

So, lesson learnt was we must duplicate a functioning key.

Coffee Lane

Honestly, I'm not a coffee lover. I never know what is the difference between a RM10 Starbucks coffee and the RM1 coffee in a kopitiam . For me, as long as the coffee is not too bitter/ too sweet, they are still acceptable (provided milk is added).

Until the day I met one of my friend, Terry, a super coffee lover, I learnt that coffee making needs a lot of knowledge and passion. All the while coffee just means coffee powder + milk for me. This friend of mine, he learned the proper ways to brew coffee, he learned about different types of coffee beans, he learned different kind of equipments for coffee brewing. He followed by investing in his dream and make it became true by opening a coffee shop named Coffee Lane.

His shop was well decorated by using 70's -80's century style.

Luckily the furniture was not same age with the decoration style.

During the opening of his shop, he showed us the coffee making by using a small cute pot.

The pot was just too small for him to hold. That's why he looked a bit puzzled.

The way to use a Aladdin pot for coffee making (sorry I can't remember the actual name).

Terry said we should rub the pot at this moment so that genie will appear and make our wish become true. -_-''

And, the most impressive method - syphon coffee. This is a very unique style (at least for me) of brewing coffee. It is just like conducting a test in chemical lab. According to my friend, this is the way to make a pure coffee. Firstly, you need to boil water by using conical flask- like equipment. Then put fresh crushed coffee powder into the funnel above the flask. The water will slowly goes up to the funnel above at certain temperature due to some scientific theory. Then, it'll mix with the powder and it will go back to the bottom at the end. Well, I'm not good in describing, but if you have the chance to witness the live show, you will say it is just like a magic show.
A good coffee doesn't need any milk and sugar to enhance it's flavour. It will be just nice to be tasted by itself. This time I really feel the difference of the coffee because the true coffee is not too bitter. After you drink it, you will feel your mouth watery but not thirsty. Don't believe? Try it.

Name: Coffee Lane
Add: 10B King Street 10200 Penang, Malaysia
Tel: 04-2610625 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting            04-2610625      end_of_the_skype_highlighting

BBQ

Happy 2010!!! Finally a new year come. So, what have you done on 1 Jan 10? Transformed into a pig and slept whole day at home? Did marathon shopping in shopping mall?

I was having BBQ and apartment stay on this special 010110! (sound like computer language). Ya, BBQ, what so special? For us, especially chinese, when we talk about BBQ, most of us will think about a lot of chicken wings marinated with soy sauce, Oyster sauce, Lea & Perrins and others seasoning. Besides, we might have some sausages, fish ball, corn and perhaps potato. That is our typical chinese style of BBQ. You might asked, what's wrong with it? Or else how should we BBQ?

Ya, out of my expectation, our BBQ style was not belonged to the category that I mentioned. Let me show you a totally different BBQ style that we had.

Firstly, sausages and fish balls were still in our food list like this. It looked like we are preparing for lok lok stall.

Chicken, a must prepare food for BBQ. But, we had different flavour for chicken. They were no longer prepared by using soy sauce and oyster sauce. I am not sure how they marinated this but i guess they put some curry powder and also some seasoning.

Then, prawn with garlic, butter, kunyit and other unrevealed ingredients.

sotong with the same marinated style with prawn.

Fish~~ double tumbs up for this special ikan bakar topped with home made paste. The fish was just nice to eat without overcook / undercook whereby all moisture was still contained in the fish.

We even had rojak as one of our food!!! Jealous for our unusual style of BBQ? Thanks to our dear malay colleagues who put lot of effort on this BBQ and made it a great success.

Some of you might wondering why all pictures shown was the food still in raw condition or in the progress of cooking. Well, the food was too nice until we finished up all once it was served. Photo was totally forgot to took before we eat. :P I know la, I am still not a good blogger yet. But food is too good to resist and wait to be eaten.

Oh ya, a small tip learnt from this BBQ, put aluminium foil on top of the metal grill first before put the food on top. It looks clean and the food will not get burned easily. Try it during your BBQ.

Christmas present

Ya, Christmas was just passed and New Year is coming. I did not really celebrated for Christmas but present exchange with friends was done since it became a 'must' do event for youngster.

I guess the most exciting part for present exchange is the moment you opened the present you got because you will never know what is inside the box!!

This was one of the scenario that I took during one of my present exchange 'ceremony'. There were many types of boxes with different design of wrapping. Some presents outlook may attracts you but you may get dissapointed when you opened it. On the other hand, a plain simple wrapping of present may give you a big surprise when you opened! Well, it was just like a gamble game where you may win by exchange a lousy present and win back a wonderful present. Of course, I do not mean to encourage anyone to buy some stupid stuffs as present.

Ok, time to annouce my present received during Christmas.

1) A cute blue Mickey mouse ear phone from ex-housemate

It can be fit to my handphone and I have an extra ear phone to put in my second bag.

2) Rice bowl, spoon and chopstick from colleague

I was shocked when I opened this present. A bowl? A large 'ramen' type bowl? Perhaps this friend like ramen so much it drove him to buy it for enticing others to be enamoured of ramen as well. Or actually this is a type of feng sui to make sure my job can be secured? (饭碗) (Rice bowl can be interpret as job in chinese) Nice set since I do not have a bowl at my current home.

3) Decorative ship from Toastmaster member

Hmm. good sign for a new year. 一帆风顺 as most of the chinese like. Hope this ship can bring luck to my target and sails them smoothly.

Merry Christmas to all of you and hope you win in the present exchange session.

Christmas Celebration - Pulau Aman

It was Christmas again~~ every year many people scratching their head to think the program for christmas. Last time, when I were young (although now still not very old), we used to celebrate Christmas by buying the spray and sprayed all people around us no matter we knew them or not.

Now, this Christmas, I went to a special place - Pulau Aman. A place near to Batu Kawan, Penang. Why I knew about this place? Just because of one email forwarded by one of my friends. In the email it stated that great Mee Udang (noodle with prawn) was served in Pulau Aman.

Therefore, we drove from butterworth to Batu Kawan in the afternoon to search for this little island. There are sign boards of 'Pulau Aman' Jetty along the road so we able to reached there smoothly.

Here we reached the jetty.

It cost us RM6.00 for this type of boat to Pulau Aman, which was just around 5-10 minutes with a slow boat speed.

This is Pulau Aman.Before we proceed with our main objective, we surfed around the island to look for other activities. We found that there were lot of la la in this island and many people were hardworking harvesting la la.
Perhaps they were just too bored since not much activies can be done over here although an attractive board was put up with a lot of activities.

Well, the island was almost explored by us within 15 minutes time including photo taking session

Therefore, we proceed with Mee Udang. We were a bit shocked when the waiter told us all food was finished except for mee goreng and mee udang. We start understand the reason for those people hardworking to collect la la. They just wanted to have more variety of food.

This was how it looked like.

The photo was a bit exaggerated (the reason we came here due to great photograph technique). The food looked nice, but in actual, the prawn was so-so fresh and the mee was tasted so-so only. Again, this plate of mee udang cost us RM6.00. So in order to eat Mee Udang in Pulau Aman, It total cost us RM13 (including drinks).

For those who want to recommend a food through sending email, please think twice and taste properly before send out so that we can help our purse

So, are you going Pulau Aman?