Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Mid-Autumn Festival

Mooncakes were used as a medium by the Ming revolutionaries in their espionage effort to secretly distribute letters in order to overthrow the Mongolian rulers of China in the Yuan dynasty. The idea is said to be conceived by Zhu Yuanzhang (朱元璋) and his advisor Liu Bowen (劉伯溫), who circulated a rumor that a deadly plague was spreading and the only way to prevent it was to eat the special mooncakes. This prompted the quick distribution of the mooncakes, which were used to hide a secret message coordinating the Han Chinese revolt on 15th day of the eighth lunar month. Another method of hiding the message was printed in the surface of mooncakes as a simple puzzle or mosaic. In order to read the encrypted message, each of the 4 mooncakes packaged together must be cut into 4 parts each. The 16 pieces of mooncake, must then be pieced together in such a fashion that the secret messages can be read. The pieces of mooncake are then eaten to destroy the message.


The snow-skin mooncake with pineapple and blueberry flavour!







Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

|ˌpərsəˈvi(ə)rəns|


"Don't worry, work hard, stay cheerful and let love take care of the rest" 
(Petronas CNY 2005)

iPhone anyone?

Apple and O2 today announced that iPhone would debut in the UK on November 9 with O2, the leading wireless carrier in the UK, as its exclusive carrier. “Our strategy at O2 is to bring our customers the best products and experiences,” said Matthew Key, CEO, O2 UK. “The iPhone is a breakthrough that is changing the way people use their mobiles forever, and we’re thrilled to have it exclusively for O2 customers in the UK.”

Hurrah! for iPhone! £268 for 8Gb...





Meeting with Xis

Managed to meet Xis, a last night before i fly back to England. We have our dinner at Tupai-Tupai (Squirrels) near the old Wisma Putra/DBP. We have a great night, chatted for a few hours. Thanks for spending your time and what a nice car too...still smell new & fresh!


and this is my dinner, beef flat noodle...and Xis had rice noodles with prawns... 


Sushi King & Ikea Restaurant

Had a quick lunch with Wymen at Sushi King in Berjaya Times Square before went to Low Yat Plaza to upgrade my MacBook. He helped me to get a new 160GB of hardrive and 2GB memory. Thanks mate for installing me a few softwares such as Parallels Desktop to run Windows XP on my Mac (really grateful because you did all the upgrading and softwares installation even though you were really tired and spent your time until 2p.m.) - iro-iro arigato gozaimashite...









After all the shopping thingy at the Low Yat, we went to Ikano to have our dinner plus Wymen needed to settle a few things at the Alliance Bank over there...





Summer Break Steamboat

A steamboat gathering at my friend's place, Joshua & Cynthia. Ah Hock and his girlfriend, leng loi, hanyih and I joined for the steamboat dinner...











taddaaaa...everybody got busy...


Later we have fried ice cream for the dessert...interesting!


Cooling Tea on Hot Day

Had the semi-bitter black jelly and cooling tea at Koong Woh Tong, Mid-Valley with Hanyih & Joshua...before went for steamboat shopping...

The cooling tea, black semi-bitter jelly with a pot of syrup...



Lonely Planet - Sabak Beach Detour

Actually i wanted to go to Cahaya Bulan Beach, but i could not find the way and ended up at Sabak Beach instead. I saw this man in action at his stall grilling these two kinds of seafood wrapped in the banana leaves and palm leaves, which smell so nice...






There were some people having their afternoon tea break at the beach...


Interesting local soft drinks, i think lemonade and root beer in dark brow bottles...


Lonely Planet - Around Siti Khadijah Wet Market

A brief visit to the wet market in the heart of Islamic City of Kota Bharu...














Two nice and sweet ladies who let me to have some samples of their goods...cheers...



Snow Effect