What's The Big Deal?

What's the big deal with Manchester United coming to Malaysia to kick our local boys butt?

What's the big deal if they just sold Cristiano Ronaldo for 80 million pounds?

What's the big deal if United cancelled their trip to Indonesia because of a few terrorist bombs?

What's the big deal if United just whipped Malaysia XI 3-2 and again 2-0?

That still doesn't make a me a Man United fan! I know this post will certainly make a lot of United fans to come back and hit me with a freaking sledgehammer. It doesn't matter because I am a Kop fan. Everyone bit at each other's head when it comes down to football. It's been a trend that Malaysians obviously love Man United and I can't deny that everyone are going crazy for the 08-09 champion. Even our current PM is a big United fan, is that big enough?

For the past few days, all I could see on the news is Manchester United, Manchester United and more Manchester United! The funniest news I've read that relates back to a Man United fan is that a husband were stabbed by the wife for coming home late after Man Utd match here in Kuala Lumpur. News was posted yesterday on several newspaper websites where it came to light on The Star Newspaper and then it went international. Serves him right. Sometimes there are certain things that's more important than watching 22 guys chasing after a single ball. Obviously the wife is oblivious with him for staying out so late when the match was over by 6pm and the guy only got home at 2am. Perhaps the guy went golfing with Man United players after the match. Haha!

Somehow I've been snubbing Man United too much for today. I think I need a break from football until Premier League season starts in mid August. Now that's something that I am looking forward to. In the end, what's the big deal over the devils visit to Malaysia that requires them to be on the news and being posted on every single newspaper sport headlines? They should not be put on a pedestal. There's not even a single review on how well our Malaysian boys played and the credits were only given to the foreign team that came.

A Brand New Gadget

Now this post were suppose to be posted back sometime ago but I just saw that it was not even a quarter finished. I think it's about time for me to reveal my new toy that was just being brought back from Hong Kong after several persuasions to my dad. The Japanese phone fever were really intoxicating after returning from Japan and I've been dying to get a phone that is similar to a Japanese phone. I guess this one will do.

The LG KF350 or simply known as the Ice Cream Phone.

Now this phone has been on the market here in Malaysia for quite sometime and currently it's being used by a colleague of mine (Bee Kin, where's your phone right now?) and also being used by another blogger that I highlighted by the name of Audrey. Costs around RM750 here in Malaysia while it costs HKD$1280 (around RM570) a piece in Hong Kong. Now the liberty of getting a mobile phone in Hong Kong is it comes down with a very strong warranty service whereas here in Malaysia, you might get turned away or simply they will just ask you to repurchase a new phone. Again, I am not snubbing our local businesses here, it's just that it's hard to trust whether we get a "Water" unit or an original unit.

The Ice Cream Phone KF350 includes:

1. Stand-by time / Talk time (mm ) : Up to 350hrs / Up to 4hrs

2. Weight (g) : 102g

3. Display Size : 240 x 320 pixels, 2.2 inches

4. Internal Memory : 33MB

5. Music Player : Yes (AMR/MP3/MID/AAC/AAC+ formats) and a FM radio

6. Phonebook : 1000 Entries ( Built-in storage & memory card )

7. Language Interface : English, Traditional Chinese & Simplified Chinese

This baby comes in 3 different colours; White, Pink and Pistachio. The colours of the phone potrays the creamy ice cream colours. This baby may not be as good as my other phone, the C510 Cyber-shot™ that was posted earlier but certainly it should work as a normal phone where it can call and receive calls as well as to SMS, that should be plainly sufficient. How user friendly it is? That will be reviewed after I started to use the phone first. I have yet to start using this phone yet as I have start to create new address book on the new phone or even to look into what is new with the phone. What I know of this phone is it will be totally different in terms of the interface comparison with other phones that I have previously used (Motorola and Sony Ericsson).

The box comes with plenty of goodies. There's several booklets of "how to use" directories, an Ear Headset, a Travel Adapter and also a USB Data Cable where you can transfer files from your computer to the phone. Freebies that comes with the phone purchase? A 2GB Micro SD card.

I wonder if there's any other phone version that is coming soon to the market that looks like a Japanese phone? If there is, I might be considering to jump ship... yet again... pending on my own finance if it's countable for a new one of course. For now, I think this little baby will stick with me for a while. I am still using my C510 model phone though as for this phone, I have another phone line for it.

Public Holiday On 7th July

Something caught my eye when I was surfing for the news on the web past few days. Now this news will certainly put a smile to every Penangite faces. You can't deny that the current government are doing all their best to promote and announce this to the public for being listed as the UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

Penang declares July 7 a public holiday from 2010

Published: Tuesday July 7, 2009 MYT 5:47:00 PM
GEORGE TOWN: The Penang Government will declare July 7 as a state public holiday beginning next year in commemoration of the date George Town received the Unesco World Heritage Site status.

Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng announced this Tuesday when launching the month-long anniversary celebrations at the century-old Town Hall here.

“George Town and Malacca’s joint listing as a Unesco World Heritage Site not only brings honour to the state but also makes our city the heritage of all mankind."

I've done some research myself over at UNESCO world heritage sites webbie and found out that Georgetown and Melaka are listed as heritage site #1223, go look it up if you are interested. The sites were marked as cultural criteria ii (to exhibit an important interchange of human values, over a span of time or within a cultural area of the world, on developments in architecture or technology, monumental arts, town-planning or landscape design), iii (to bear a unique or at least exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition or to a civilization which is living or which has disappeared) and iv (to be an outstanding example of a type of building, architectural or technological ensemble or landscape which illustrates (a) significant stage(s) in human history). That's something!

Now I need sometime to let this news to sink in. Phew! I can't wait for July 7th to come next year and I am a very proud Penangite, that's for sure!

Drag Me To Hell???

It's the weekends again and each every weekends there are sure plenty of things that takes place. But not really for the last weekend and this time, I've had a little movie day with my dear and my colleagues (Soo Bing, Angelyn, Cheah, Amy and Hafifi). They have chosen a rather awkward movie to watch on a very dull Saturday. We gathered at Queensbay GSC cinema to watch...

Name: Drag Me To Hell

Language: English
Date of release: 15th March 2009 (USA)
Director: Sam Raimi
Starring: Alison Lohman, Dileep Rao, Justin Long

The story basically tells about Christine Brown, an ambitious L.A. loan officer with a charming boyfriend, professor Clay Dalton. Life is good until the mysterious Mrs. Ganush, arrives at the bank to beg for an extension on her home loan. Christine must follow her instincts whether to give the old woman a break or should she deny the extension to impress her boss, Mr. Jacks; to gain on a promotion. Christine fatefully chooses the latter, shaming Mrs. Ganush and dispossessing her of her home. In retaliation, the old woman places the powerful curse of the Lamia on Christine, transforming her life into a living hell. Haunted by an evil spirit and misunderstood by a skeptical boyfriend, she seeks the aid of seer Rham Jas to save her soul from eternal damnation. To help the shattered Christine return her life to normal, the psychic sets her on a frantic course to reverse the spell.

What can I review about this movie are based on my dear's perspective; every scary movie always comes silently, and then either a loud scream or something would appear out of no where, and it always happens during the dark. I too agrees on what she said. It's like you know what's coming from a roller coaster ride. What I could recall about this director filming a horror movie was from the movie "The Grudge" that I watched back in 2003. Really brings out the scaring elements out in the movie although many claimed that the Japanese version were much more horrifying. Anyway, I thought this movie would be on par with The Grudge, but I was wrong; it was no where near that standard.

The computer graphics on the old lady is so poor, I felt ticklish down on my spine. The movie also offers a lot of Christine kissing the old lady and things were stuck into the mouth or coming out of it, I wonder what's with all the mouths!? There are more very childish stuff regarding this movie that I don't think it's even worth mentioning. The sound effects were so loud, the next thing that I could hear was a ringing sound after all the loud scenes finishes. The only thing that I was giving the thumbs up was the Lamia curse where I eventually think it did tells the story about how the curse torments its prey until the 3rd day. Overall this movie is really not the horror movie to watch if you are up for a scare. Like my dear says, it's just too predictable. Another horror movie that went so wrong.

Rating: 3 out of 10 stars

My Recent Discovery Saturdays (Part 2)

I am just wondering if things are not going very well with my blog as I am starting to feel as my fellow readers are getting less interactive or perhaps I am not writing the good stuffs here. Maybe I am just being extremely sensitive towards what's happening towards the silentness of my readers. Write in, don't just keep quiet... don't be the "read and leave" type.

Continuing from where I left, we took a drive all the way to Balik Pulau that afternoon. We took the shortcut to reach there by using the new trunk road which were built cutting through in the middle of the old Long Buoy road. For those who lived long enough in Penang, you should have known about this road. The trip to get to Balik Pulau were quick, took us about 20 minutes to climb the hill and then slope all the way down to the heart of Balik Pulau town. I didn't even realized that the old market in Balik Pulau town has been moved to a newer and much beautiful looking market that was built a few hundred metres from its old site. Gosh! It has been almost 2 years ago ever since I last came here with Tee, Hui Koon, Maria and gang for a durian fest. Never thought that so much has changed here and the development around the area seemed quite significant as the houses in Balik Pulau are growing like mushrooms!

Since mom's friend who lived in Balik Pulau area knew the area well, she took us to the new market to enjoy some light lunch. The Balik Pulau Laksa. Everyone certainly knew how famous the Balik Pulau laksa is and it was tedious to come to Balik Pulau to have one back in those days. Moving from the old market to the new market was a wise move as the car park there was spacious and more sitting space of course. I wonder if the crowd scene has died as when I reach there that afternoon, there were not much people. Normally, during lunch hour at the old market, you can't even find a place to sit.

Anyway, the new place looks tidy and neat. The laksa aunty and his son has been working since 9am. We took the liberty of asking the aunty a few questions about the stall. According to her, their stall opens from 9am to 5pm daily except Thursday. They have a few stalls setup across the market area as she pointed to the back of the stall and claimed that she even have ANOTHER stall opened just behind this stall. She also had another stall opened up at the old market site, nearby a cafe. So her business has expanded over the years.

Enough jabbering and it's time to order us some laksa! It's what we are here for. As we are waiting for our laksa to be served, a few picture moments with my little nephew and Cindy. He was extremely naughty that day, making faces and even tried to snatch my camera as well.

This is the famous Balik Pulau laksa without the Hae Ko (Shrimp paste)

And this one is with the Hae Ko.

Our drinks were the nutmeg juice which is being juiced up pretty well and it tastes extremely refreshing!

The damage for all of those stuff for the pack of 7 was RM25 inclusive of the nutmeg juice. Talk about cheap! Will definitely come back for more of these laksa and Cindy even told me that if I ever come back, don't forget to take away a pack for her too. Hehe! That was only our light lunch and now we are up for another round of lunch... and my mom calls it the buffet lunch. It's the season of the Kings and that's the reason why we are in Balik Pulau for, the durian fest. Hehe!

Our little convoy to Balik Pulau.

This is the place we had our durians, hut 207. I wonder why they have so many numbers along the way. It looks like its a home address but it's just not. Weird. Now the season of the durians only comes once or twice a year. If lucky, we might have 3. But for this year around, we only have one so far so if we are hoping for a second season, it might be a long shot... according to the durian seller.

Presenting the king of the fruits... very thorny... Haha! :-P

It requires a great deal of skill to open a durian but you need a very sharp knife to do as demonstrated by the durian seller here.

Durian comes in many many names. To name a few there's Hor Lor, Red Prawn, Kun Poh Ang Bak, Green Skin Ang Bak, D600, Little Red, D604, D11 and many more... phew! I never know that there's just so many names for durians! There are bitter durians and there also the sweet durians. I would prefer to go for the sweet meat ones because the bitter ones, tastes like drinking beer.

According to wiki, the durian, native to Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia, has been known to the Western world for about 600 years. The 19th-century British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace famously described its flesh as "a rich custard highly flavoured with almonds". Wow! I know the westerners has a complication with these thorny things, but never realize that Mr Alfred gave such a highly respectable comment on it. Haha!

My little nephew loves durian as well and he kept screaming for more. Mom kept feeding him with durians and he kept making a mess around the mouth. Our durian fest came to an end after having to eat 7 durians and take away 3. The total damage for the fest was RM60. It's so cheap and the aunty was very nice to us. We'll make our visit again, if we are still up for more durians... that's for sure.

My naughty little nephew, Marcus; with his antiques again... making faces. This time he asks my fellow readers to hush and admire the next and the last of the photos. Haha!

The aerial view of the Balik Pulau area from the top of the hill. Don't ask me what is the hill name but this rest stop area is along on the new Balik Pulau - Long Buoy new trunk road, you won't miss it. That's the last of my latest discovery saturdays. Will blog again soon, most probably headed back to Japan again as there's more to blog from there.

My Recent Discovery Saturdays (Part 1)

Let's take a break from Tokyo talking too much and head back home for 2 posts of what I have been up back in Penang. I guess that there's something that cannot be missed and to share with my fellow readers.

With my mom banging on the doors as usual on Saturday mornings (I guess no one likes to be waken up so abruptly in a beauty sleep), I had no choice but to crawl out of bed. I was extremely tired from the entire week of battering at work, so much tension and so much things going on. I know, congratulations... Mackinaw has finally shipped its first few thousand portable radios out to the market and yet here we go again, being dragged into the pits of hell to again endure the following few months of sheer hell, working on the next project without breaks.

Anyway, enough of all those jabbering nonsense about work. It's Saturday for pete's sake! I needed my rest when mom reminds me of the things that we will be doing for the day and it hits me instantly... time to discover some new things today. Wow! Brush teeth, shower and I totally forgotten about breakfast, got my trusty camera and off we go!

First up, the Kuan Yim See Temple, located around the Fettes Park housing area. Most probably no one will be able to tell if such place existed as it is located in a quite hidden area around Tanjung. My mom found out about this place from a friend, who lived in Balik Pulau area and yet knowing about this little place is something extraordinary. This proves that Penangites are great discoverers... Haha! As those who has known me extremely well that I can't read a tiny bit of Chinese so I didn't do much of a background check of how the place was constructed.

However, this place is extremely green, that's for sure. Lushes of trees and wild flowers flourish in this area. On an extremely hot morning and windless day, luckily we have the trees to provide lots of cover for us as we began our climb to the temple on top of the hill. Did I mentioned that the temple is located on a hill? I guess I didn't. Cars are parked at the foot of the hill and the rest of the journey requires some climbing. There's also a rail track that leads uphill which was used to transport items to the top of the hill.

The foot of the hill were eventually swamped with tortoise all range of sizes. It homes roughly around few hundreds of tortoise, which makes it incredible as some of the smaller sizes tortoise are free to roam about while the bigger ones are put into a big pond, like the one seen in Kek Lok Si Temple.

The climb uphill were steep eventhough there's a stairway walking up towards the temple. Scenery wise, there's nothing much to see as you will only pass by a few old huts along the way. As you reach the temple, you might run out of breathe (if you are fit enough, you find the walk up as easy as a stroll in the park). For me, it was nothing much... it's just that my dad started to break into sweat mode after that climb.

This place nearly resembles Kek Lok Si temple, well... almost. As soon as you walk up towards the main entrance to the main temple, it will definitely reminds you of Kek Lok Si (those who has not visited Kek Lok Si for ages, I think the last sentence that I mention are not applicable... lols!). This place is extremely quiet and it's not particularly crowded with foreign tourists. I only saw one family that came up earlier than us to make their prayers.

A look of what you could see from the main entrance of the main temple hall.

A picture of the opposite side from the main entrance of the temple hall. The view from this area is good but there's far better ones which will be revealed as you progress.

This place housed a mini pagoda and a park where a few buddha statues are being placed inside the park itself.

The Kuan Yin goddess statue were recently built according to my mom's friend who joined us later. This temple are built to worship the goddess so I guess it's good to have a big Kuan Yin goddess statue placed nicely.

The reason why I said the statue was placed nicely is because the statue overlooks the entire Tanjung area. The view are extremely breathtaking to be honest. And thank goodness the haze has eased up or else this picture will definitely go to waste.

This area are also swamped with plenty of fruit trees ranging from Rambutan's to Durian's, Nangka's to Mango's. Mom and her friends helped themselves towards the more yellowish Rambutan's as the green ones are still not really at an eatable stage yet (according to them that is).

There's another climb up to reach the "Datuk Nenek" or the hokkien people calls it the "Na Tuk Kong". I didn't manage to take any pictures of the place of worship as should I say... rather forbidden. I don't want to take a picture that might lead me to take something EXTRA inside the picture... I hope you know what I mean. The Na Tuk Kong (拿督公) is a local guardian spirit that resides in trees, ant hills, caves, riversides and in strange stone formations. Some common forms are a white tiger and the form of an old man dressed in white. A Na Tuk Kong can also be "invited" to reside outside (never indoors) a family home for spiritual protection and luck. You may say that I am such a superstituous person but I am not taking my chances out of it to take a picture. The little temple were placed under a very big tree at the end of the walk which you will definitely not miss it.

The scenery that overlooks from the Na Tuk Kong temple. Nice view isn't it?

The tour around the area came to an end a few minutes before the stroke of noon. This picture was taken as little Marcus was babbling something to his mom and his grandpa. I will continue on with the next one whereby we will head over to Balik Pulau for lunch and there's certainly plenty in store.