Baking It With Some Effort

Some say that baking takes plenty of skills. You may get it wrongly done on the first try or perhaps you will get it right? All depends on the luck sometimes too. My dear has plenty of experience in baking thanks to her household. They've done so many bakings, I think they've lost count of how much they've baked and what are the cookies and cakes that they've created. Never the less, it was such an honour to have her being at my side this time around to guide me while we tried our best to make the first cake a successful one.

As the weekends were rather long, we've decided to try ourselves to bake a cake and the direction took us to go shopping at the Cold Storage at Island Plaza. With a shopping list in mind, we've quickly grabbed what we needed, headed straight for home and get into the baking. It's not easy. You will need water, eggs, butter, chocolate chips (for garnishing) and of course... the essential item of all...

The Pillsbury Cake Mix. YES! We're cheating and this is the best way of making a cake without having to go through the effort of measuring the right amount of sugar and flour that is needed to make one.

Mix all together into one big bowl and stir in one direction. She told me to keep stiring on a single direction and I started the other way around when I took over. With so much troubles I've caused, she gave me an earful and took back the mix. Hehe!

The mix will then go into a baking pan. Off it goes into a pre-heated oven that's over 180 celcius.

It bakes rather slow as it takes about an hour for it completely bake. We kept pulling the pan in and out of the oven because we wanted to garnish the cake with the chocolate chips that we've bought, no wonder it took THAT long.

And the wait... it's agonizingly long. Trust me! It is! I had to cool myself down over a can of drinks while sitting in front of the hot oven. The sound of the oven beeping calling for us that it's done is so sweet that inside my heart, I'm jumping with joy (of course I don't jump all over the kitchen when it's done).

And here it is... the CAKE! We call it the "Vanilla Butter Chocolate Chips Cake". Mind the long name. This is what it really tastes when you put it into the mouth.

A picture of myself and the MASTER chef who has thought me a handful. Will try it again in the near future as this round, we've successfully baked a fluffy and delicious cake! She asked "How was it overall?" and my answer to her was with an eye-brow raised "SYIOK!"

Taking A Break?

To all my fellow readers... as you may have notice that the blog has not been updated for quite a while now. Sorry for that. I've been taking too much break and I've spent more time writing documentation at work these days that prevents me from having any spirit/mood to write anything here. Never the less, do expect a sudden flood of postings here soon. Thanks for the support everyone.

A True Malaysian Hero

He's almost 80 years old of age and he's living his retired life in Sungai Petani. He's rather well known among the local community even everyone in my family loves him as he's a jovial and funny person to be around with. With plenty of experiences from his past only to be told in the present, sitting down with him over a cup of tea in the afternoon can be truly a mindteasing experience.

Our family members calls him by the name of Uncle Joe. Tan Soon Aun was his real name and he was branded with many other nicknames during his service for the Malaysian Army (Tentera Darat . Thrown into the midst of revenge for the family that was murdered by the communists and he will never forgive and forget those days. He kept telling me that "It never slips off my mind how my parents were killed on that day... and it continues to haunt me in my sleep once in a while." If anyone talks about Chin Peng (the Malayan Communist Party leader), he will say "I will take whatever necessary action so that I can end that man's life if he ever comes back to Malaysia."

He was blessed with 2 sons and a daughter. His pride as a father were then shredded into pieces when his eldest son married to a Vietnamese wife and it all happened with the so-called ungrateful son of his turned his back from him after his marriage. According to him, his son never returned to see him whenever he was sick or didn't even bother to talk to him at all. He considered his son as a long lost child that was never being born. Uncle Joe's wife did slip us a few notes that he still misses his son although his mouth were condemning him to hell.

On a lighter note, Uncle Joe has been a family friend for a very long time. He has been a true friend to my late grandfather and everyone enjoys his company. The reason being is that he has many philosophy in his speech and it always ends with a joke. The conversation with him on that day was somewhat funny because we were teasing Uncle Thomas for being single all these time. He always give me a few tips on how to be a real man around woman. I will surely remember how to apply those tips when the right moment comes.

His house are full of trees and bonsais that he likes so much as he spend most of his time tending to these trees, turning his entire garden into a little forest. From time to time, he opens the door for the public to come see him. That's because he's a practitioner in traditional medication using herbs that's being gathered in the forest. "I won't charge these people, helping people is always a noble thing to do". The people around the area knows him well. He did tell us that if you go out to the streets around Sungai Petani and mention his name, everyone will surely knows of him.

Chinese New Year was never complete without visiting him in the past and we never took the effort to go see him for the last few years. It's still surprising to see him being so strong and still maintained his lively status for a man being this old. "The key to my long life is to just sit here, drink tea and smoke. Everything else, I just let others go settle."

He gave everyone a chance to touch his beard on that day, which I find it funny. He mentioned that not everyone has this chance to touch it other than himself, but since he's happy he'll be much happier if we do. And by doing so, he'll bless us with good fortune for the rest of the year. Everyone broke out with laughter as it was rather hilarious coming from him. Oh... those were the good times!

A jolly good man and that's how I will always remember him for.

Laughing With 72 Tenants

You don't really celebrate Chinese New Year until you go and watch a funny, entertaining chinese movie to ring in the new year. With so much promotion being done for this movie, I was thrilled to get plans rolling for my family to go and watch this movie on the first day of the new year. The crowd were thin upon arrival. Tickets were bought 2 days earlier which was picked up the day before, I just kept telling my family that you will be in for a very good and funny movie.

Name: 72 Tenants of Prosperity (72家租客)
Language: Cantonese
Date of release: 11th February 2010 (Hong Kong)
Director: Eric Tsang and Patrick Kong
Starring: Eric Tsang, Jacky Cheung, Bosco Wong, Anita Yuen

The movie begins in 1970s Hong Kong, rapacious landlords try to evict 72 tenants but sworn brothers Ha Kung and Shek Kin. With the help from the group of 72 defeat the landlord and landlady, coincidentally rescue Pinky from a planned forced marriage. When both sworn brothers fall for Pinky and propose to her, she flips a coin heads or tails and Ha wins her hand in marriage. The sworn brothers become sworn enemies and Sheks hatred fuels intense rivalry against Ha in business dealings. Even after 40 years they continue to clash and in 2010 they are in keen competition selling electronics appliances in Sai Yeung Choi Street, Mongkok, the busiest street in the city and still home to the 72 tenants. In a fiercely competitive Sai Yeung Choi Street high rents force businessmen to use every means to survive. These ploys are minor compared with the tactics of the landlord who threatens to close down the shops unless his demands for triple rental are met. Amidst this strife and struggle the street is hit by acid-attacks and in high spirits the 72 tenants unite and pledge to safeguard their home.

Many rated this movie may not be able to beat the other chinese new year movie All's Well Ends Well 2010 because of how well it did in the year 2009, so people will think that the 2010 will be better and funnier... however 72 Tenants proved that it has what it takes to beat that movie to claim the funniest show for the year 2010. There's Sam Hui's "Pun Kan Pat Leong" to Michael Jackson's Beat It, Jacky Cheung also has its fair share of his songs being sang throughout the movie. The jokes were never dry where it was entertainingly funny and the movie kept to its promise that there's no extras, just pure Hong Kong actor and actresses are the key figures to the movie. Kevin Cheng of Burning Flame 3 and also Michael Tse as Laughing Gor from the series E.U also made their presence felt in this movie. I had a good time watching this movie, it's every minute well spent and also the funny moments were stuck in my head for quite a while too! The best part would be to see everyone came out smiling, now that's the best thing to happen during Chinese New Year.

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.

Where Wind And Cloud Meets

If you have been a huge fan of the Storm Riders movie back in 1998, then this movie will eventually go well with the fans. What I could remember was the all time popular sitting down pose by Cloud (Aaron Kwok) which was eventually a major hit and every boys in school eventually started to taking their own personal photos in the manner. With good news being announced that Ekin Cheng and Aaron Kwok would return 10 years after the original Storm Riders for a sequel, no wonder those ardent fans were buzzing about this movie since early 2009.

Name: The Storm Warriors (風雲 II)
Language: Cantonese
Date of release: 10th December 2009(Hong Kong)
Director: Danny Pang and Oxide Pang
Starring: Aaron Kwok, Ekin Cheng, Simon Yam

The movie tells of Lord Godless and his son, Heart; whom are out to take over the martial arts world and the Middle Kingdom. They imprisoned the Emperor together with a large number of martial artists and tried to make them subjugate. Even with Nameless, Wind and Cloud combined effort, they cannot defeat Godless and his impenetrable body armor. Injured from battle, they seek the help of reclusive master Lord Wicked who guides Wind into harnessing the powers of the dark side. A dejected Cloud who was shunned by Lord Wicked from training, were then taken in by Nameless as his student. Both Wind and Cloud quickly boosted up their martial arts skills through intense training by Lord Wicked and Nameless. Godless, meanwhile, is forcing the Emperor to reveal the location of the powerful "Dragon Bone" relic. Unable to control his newfound powers, Wind loses himself to the dark side, and sets out to destroy Godless... and Cloud.

Special effects... check! Awesome fighting sequences... check! Aaron Kwok sitting pose... check! Now I was thrilled to watch this movie at home after I bought the original DVD from the store and the movie just blows me away. I've read plenty of reviews how this movie sucked and has copied a lot of Western features, I'm very much disagreeing with those critiques. If you would just sit down, relax and open yourself to the movie, the entire movie is rather an enjoyable sequel to watch. The opening song that was sang by Aaron and Ekin was great as well. The bad point about this movie was Charlene Choi. She didn't really fit well for her role, period! And the worst thing that ever happened about this movie was... it didn't end as well as I thought. It leaves every fans hanging in the middle of the air with that bloody poor script! I hate middle of the air storylines. Never the less, I didn't go to the cinema's to watch it so I still enjoyed fast-forwarding when I see Charlene on the screen and repeating the best fighting parts a few times with the remote.

Rating: 5 out of 10 stars.