C2PID drivers on the road

Driving on Malaysian roads can be a challenge. Maybe not as challenging as driving on roads in China, but we come a close second. I managed to shoot this scene at the junction of Bandar Tun Razak and Taman Connaught overhead pass, just before the lights turned green on my lane.The car highlighted by the yellow arrow decided to create it's own turning lane, oblivious to the fact that all three row of cars would be turning into a lane and the half. Yes - 1.5 lanes thanks to the wisdom of our road planners. And there was this motorcyclist from God knows where, going against traffic, trying to get to hell fast. This is one S.O.B. who deserves to die a gory death on the road.
When I cropped and expanded on the 3 rows of cars trying to turn right - 2 of them have outstation plates. The QKU car (from Kuching??) even had his child seated in the front passenger seat with the (presumably) mum and no seat belt. The Perak plates (AFY) is the one creating his own turning lane.

This may be somebody's grandfather's road, but I am sure as hell it is not theirs.

Pham's visit to Malaysia - updated and reposting

Pham survived Bangkok and this morning, I saw an email from him

"How are you? I have not heard from you since we left Malaysia. Were you exhaust after took care all of us while we were there? I hope you are well and still are happy. Anyway, I copied your article from blog and added more pictures to it. The pdf file is attached to this message. It is a very good report which can be added to Malaysia travel brochure. If you don’t mind, I would like to send your report to my relative and friends, just in case they want to visit Malaysia. Please let me know."

Gee, Pham thought that writeup was good enough for a Malaysian Travel Brochure! (face RED, RED!!). Pham edited some of my entries and also combined 2 entries into one, so I thought I should repost the narration of his trip here. Apologies to Lynh for mis-spelling her name. I write it as I hear it.

The weekend of 10th May turned out to be one of the longest that I have had for sometime. I had starting preparing for it almost a week ago. I had a couple of guests coming to Malaysia. Pham Phan and wife were arriving on 10th May, landing in KLIA at 10.50am. This was their first visit to Malaysia. I have been meeting up with Pham all over Asia in the course of our work. Pham had been absolutely helpful in helping to raise the technical capability of the Support teams in Asia Pacific. And I have known him for uncountable years!! So when I heard that he was making a trip here, I offered to take him around for the weekend.

Upon their arrival, I whisked them off to One World hotel next to 1 Utama. After checking in, my family (wife and Alex) joined in for lunch - local Malacca food. Then we were off to Ipoh. My intentions were to show them a little bit of rural Malaysia. I turned off the highway at Tapah, took the trunk roads all the way to Ipoh. Along the way, we stopped at Gua Tempurung as I was looking for information to plan an outing there. Main objective of the Ipoh trip was to visit the Sam Poh Tong caves. But we arrived late (5.30pm) and the darn temples along that stretch were all closed!! What a wasted journey. We ended up buying pomeloes and tidbits at the pomelo stalls just outside of the temple caves. Luckily my uncle lives in Ipoh. So I brought my guests (unannounced) to his house to show them how a relatively well off family lived. Being Americans of Vietnamese descent, they were in 2 minds. On the one hand, the American in them says you don't show up unannounced at anyone's home. On the other hand, the Asian in them knows that this is an accepted practice. In any case, my Uncle (Dr. Tham) and Aunt were at home and welcomed them. In front of Dr. Tham’s house

We had dinner in a restaurant recommended by my uncle (Sun Marpoh Restaurant - look for the captain - Ah Yew and say Dr. Tham asked me to go there!!). Good food and even better prices!! Took less than 1.5 hours to get them from Ipoh back to the hotel. It was also an opportunity to test my new Camry. Regular town driving so far had been 8.6km/ lit. The journey to Ipoh and back saw my consumption improve to 11.8km/ lit ((about 16.3 sen per km). But Saturday 10th May was not very productive.

Sunday 11th May - told them to wait at 10am in the hotel.

Showed up on time and first stop was Selangor Pewter in Setapak. Selangor Pewter

Then I took them to my former landlady's house (unannounced again) to show them how the average Joe lived. From there, we visited the Hot Spring in Setapak before moving onto Batu Caves Batu Caves Batu Caves is a limestone hill, which has a series of caves and cave temples, located in Gombak district, 13 km north of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It takes its name from the Sungai Batu or Batu River, which flows past the hill. After climb up 273 steps, we finally reached to the top of the cave After that it was Thean Hou temple and then to my house. All that completed by 2.30pm. At 3pm, we left my house to go back to the hotel. They needed a breather and I needed to catch up with my second guest - Angela Ong who was suppose to arrive at One World before 3pm. Her flight was delayed and she ended up checking in around 4pm. The night ended with a trip to Ijok to the New Beggar Chicken Restaurant. I was supposed to have 7 people for the meal. One of my other guest was my E-pal (like a pen pal, except that we had been communicating via the Internet) Alex Bunny. Unfortunately she had been having digestive problems and could not make it. Most people in the office declined the invitation due to Mother's Day. One who did accept did an FFK on me at the last minute as she went back to Malacca and could not make it back in time. SO we ended up with 5 - Pham and Wife, Angela, Ian Sik and me!

The food was worth it. I had to reserve the table and at least 3 of the main courses almost ONE week before the planned event. Right after we were seated, a wheelbarrow was pushed near to our table and the baked clayey thing lifted out. A couple of workers started the process of removing the clay covering and then serving the dishes to us. We had Beggar Chicken Beggar Rice Beggar Pig Trotters (which was a mistake in the order. I ordered Pig Stomach Soup, but Pham took one look at the pig trotters and wanted it anyway. Boiled Lettuce garnished with fried onions and Oyster Sauce and Fried sizzled prawns.
And to end the day, a last minute addition to the itinerary was to look for fireflies. All 4 of them went for that. I had been on the sampan before so I ended up looking after the bags. What a night!! Pham Phan told me that his kids were keeping up with his travel through my blog!! Gee, if I had known earlier, I would have updated everyday!!. In any case here are the updates and photos.

14th May – Twin Tower Finally convinced Pham and Lin to let me take them around KL. Lynh was planning to pay for a tour package to go to the Petronas Twin Towers, Chinatown and visit a night market. First of all, Chinatown in KL is nothing like Chinatown in San Francisco. For one thing, it does not even look and feel like Chinatown. Many of the vendors in KL's Chinatown are Bangladeshis or some other immigrant workers. Another thing is that tours of these sorts tends to bring you to selected shops/ outlets where they try to convince you to buy things that you do not want at exorbitant prices with the tour guide getting a cut of the sale.
We started the evening with a short visit to the KL convention centre (KLCC for short) to get pictures of the Petronas Twin Towers - which are still the tallest TWIN towers in the world, but not the tallest building anymore. We arrived as dusk was setting in. Light was fading fast. So the shots were a little underexposed. But the night shots of the twin towers from the park were great!! As for Night Markets (or Pasar Malam, as the locals calls it), they have them all over town on every night of the week. Everyday, a different location has a night market. So for this night, I took all my guests (Angela included) to eat Pork Rib Soup (or Bak Kut Teh). This is an herbal soup which is cooked with any variety of meats (e.g. pork ribs, pig stomach, intestines), champignons and mushrooms (oyster, straw, etc), Chinese cabbage and served with rice of in our case rice cooked with yam. This stall was near my house and they also served pig trotters in vinegar - which had Pham and Angela salivating!!. After dinner, all of us went to one of the longest night market in KL, i.e. the one in Taman Connaught. Angela managed to get smelly tofu to satiate her watchamacallit.

15th May – Durian night This was the night that I had promised to get them durians (thorny Asian fruit which Westerners liken to smelling like shit and taste like heaven)!! But the durian season has only just started and the varieties and offerings were mediocre at best. A regular site that I go to did not have anything available until 20th May - which was too late as all my guests would have gone home by then. So we had to settle for whatever we could get - which was pretty bland stuff.
When we finished, we went to one of my friend's house, parked the car there and went to explore yet another night market. This time, the experience was much better. The night market of the previous night was so packed jammed full of people that it was stifling and difficult to walk through all the stalls. We dropped by an Indian Muslim restaurant and had something called a roti tissue - which is a tissue thin piece of bread (or prata). Look at the length of that!! Well - that's another night of Malaysian experience for Pham and Lynh and Angela.

Weight bungeeing

After the low of 109kg from my India trip a few weeks ago, the visit of Pham, Lynh and Angela caused a mighty reversal (upwards). One week of gorging on rich food is not good. Especially not for the love handles and part of body which walks ahead of me!!

So since last week, it was back to oatmeal for dinners during the weekday. Sure works fine as long as I watch my food intake during lunch. On one of those days, lunch was at Marche, partly to satiate Elaine W.'s hankering for Marche's. All I had was a self made salad (I wanted the whole plastic container of alfafa grass, but the counter staff won't let me have it), a wild mushroom soup and a glass of carrot/orange freshly squeezed juice and I was full. That's a relief!! No foot long sausages, no salmon steaks, no meat!!

This week, it is still oatmeal for dinner, but my lunch is somewhat screwed - customer training is going on in the office and there is enough food for tea breaks and lunch to feed the whole department. And sometimes it looks scrumptious.

Sigh!! Luckily weight is still below 100kg!

Planted a mango tree today. Now to wait

More than a year ago, a very strong wind blew through the neighborhood and blew my mango tree down. The photo below shows the chiku tree in the background with the (new) mango tree planted near the pots of other plants that I have in the garden. Today, I decided to plant a new mango tree. I am not using the previous location in the garden. Last time, the tree was too close to the house, resulting in constant trimmings required before the tree branches starts to knock on the roof of the patio.

This time, I placed the tree in about what I consider the center of the garden. Now I just have to wait (3 years)?? before I start to see fruits.

Denai Alam house ready - what next?

My Denai Alam house has been ready for some months. There were a few defects inside that needed the developer to remedy. This morning, I took a quick recce and so far all the defects that I brought to their attention has been fixed.

I also took the opportunity to see what my neighbors were doing in terms of renovation. First concern that I had was the electric and water meters. I am still holding onto the 3 big fuses for the electric mains (for 3 phase wiring), since I am not staying in yet. The way the meters are setup, it is a prime target for vandals and thieves to easily remove or vandalize. Here is how some of my neighbors protected their meters. I would probably do the same and most likely opt for a single grill cover instead of the 2 grill designs of most.

There is another neighbor who did an extensive renovation - replacing the driveway, changing the wall surfaces and extended the main door to be flushed with the other doors.And of course when doing renovations, one needs to display that all important permission to renovate notice issued by the City Council of Shah Alam (MBSA). Sheesh!!
I am now waiting for my neighbor Allan (Elaine C.'s bro) to decide when he wants to commence renovations. I'll put this property on the rental market once renovations are complete.

My 100th Blogspot entry

I started blogging more than a year and the half ago on Friendster and then abandoned Friendster for Blogspot. Really don't remember the dates - I am not one for anniversaries!! I only know that this is my 100th update in Blogspot because it says so.

In fact, I can only vaguely recall that I shifted to my current house some 16 years ago on Vesak Day (which is tomorrow). Even then I can write with certainty that it was 16 years ago because that's about how long I have known my God daughter and her family. Had to subtract her current age from the time that I first met her to arrive at the timeline!!

I was planning to move into my current house later - but you know the saying - man proposes, God disposes. My wife and I spent many weeks coming to the new house to dig up the garden to remove the rubbish (cement, rocks, stones, cement bags, bricks, etc) from the garden. Somewhere along the way, I applied to take up my MBA, got accepted and decided that we should have to move in without extensive renovations. Needed all my financial reserves to see me through the course. There was NO sponsorship from the company!!. Only the grills were installed and we moved into the house thereafter.

So for the past 16 years in this house, I have had the kitchen extended, knocked out one sliding door and installed a wall with 2 windows, grew a mango and chiku tree and had a very strong wind topple my mango tree (the fruits were very very sweet!!).

This year, we finally got the upstairs parquet floor relaid with timber flooring. Added a polycarbonate awning in front and at the side. And of course my latest toy is the third one in this house - the first being a Mazda Astina, followed by the Toyota Unser.

Of all the friends and neighbors that I had, the one that I truly treasure is of course my God daughter - Elaine. After her family moved to Taman Putri Jaya, I saw a lot less of her and since more than a year ago, she has been working in the same department as me. To me the memory of that little 9 year old kid running all over the neighborhood is still fresh in my mind.
Thanks Elaine for being a part of my life!

Pham's visit to Malaysia 14th and 15th May

Pham Phan told me that his kids were keeping up with his travel through my blog!! Gee, if I had known earlier, I would have updated everyday!!. In any case here are the updates and photos.

14th May
Finally convinced Pham and Lin to let me take them around KL. Lin was planning to pay for a tour package to go to the Petronas Twin Towers, Chinatown and visit a night market. First of all, Chinatown in KL is nothing like Chinatown in San Francisco. For one thing, it does not even look and feel like Chinatown. Many of the vendors in KL's Chinatown are Bangladeshis or some other immigrant workers. Another thing is that tours of these sorts tends to bring you to selected shops/ outlets where they try to convince you to buy things that you do not want at exorbitant prices with the tour guide getting a cut of the sale.

We started the evening with a short visit to the KL convention centre (KLCC for short) to get pictures of the Petronas Twin Towers - which are still the tallest TWIN towers in the world, but not the tallest building anymore. We arrived as dusk was setting in. Light was fading fast. So the shots were a little underexposed. But the night shots of the twin towers from the park were great!!

As for Night Markets (or Pasar Malam, as the locals calls it), they have them all over town on every night of the week. Everyday, a different location have a night market.

So for this night, I took all my guests (Angela included) to eat Pork Rib Soup (or Bak Kut Teh). This is a herbal soup which is cooked with any variety of meats (e.g. pork ribs, pig stomach, intestines), champignons and mushrooms (oyster, straw, etc), Chinese cabbage and served with rice of in our case rice cooked with yam This stall was near my house and they also served pig trotters in vinegar - which had Pham and Angela salivating!!. After dinner, all of us went to one of the longest night market in KL, i.e. the one in Taman Connaught. Angela managed to get smelly tofu to satiate her watchamacallit.

15th May
This was the night that I had promised to get them durians (thorny Asian fruit which Westerners liken to smelling like shit and taste like heaven)!! But the durian season has only just started and the varieties and offerings were mediocre at best. A regular site that I go to did not have anything available until 20th May - which was too late as all my guests would have gone home by then. So we had to settle for whatever we could get - which was pretty bland stuff.

When we finished, we went to one of my friend's house, parked the car there and went to explore yet another night market. This time, the experience was much better. The night market of the previous night was so packed jammed full of people that it was stifling and difficult to walk through all the stalls. We dropped by an Indian Muslim restaurant and had something called a roti tissue - which is a tissue thin piece of bread (or prata). Look at the length of that!!

Well - that's another night of Malaysian experience for Pham and Lin and Angela.

Another nite of food - 13th May

As the week progresses, I am probably piling on the pounds. Next week shall be a week of starvation (diet that is). Pham and wife decided that they would like to explore I Utama on their own on Monday and Tuesday. So I only had to host Angela for dinners. Lunches were too short to really go to places further away for food.

Today's meal was at Unique Fisherman Restaurant in Jalan Kemajuan. This chain has outlets everywhere and Elaine, my God daughter says that this outlet has the best Crabs fried with salted eggs!! So for tonight's dinner, we had Angela, Ian, Elaine and me. With such a small group, there was not much that we could order.

We had the Pak Cham Kai (chicken that was boiled - like you would be making chicken soup, except that the WHOLE chicken was in the pot!!). I especially like the ginger/ garlic/oil sauce that comes with this dish.

Angela specifically requested that we should have at least a vegetable dish. So we had the yin yang Kailan (or broccoli served in 2 styles). The leaves were fried to a crispy texture and the stalk and some other leaves were essentially boiled and served with some hoi sin (oyster) sauce and garnishing.

No rice was ordered or served as everyone declined. So a noodle dish was ordered.

Last but not least was the Crab fried with salted egg yolk. Gives it a salty twang. Elaine was right. In another outlet that we had tried in Cheras, the salted egg yolk was a bit wet and runny. Here, the dish was just dry enough with no sauces dripping everywhere.

Tomorrow we will eat sparingly.

Long weekend from the 10th May

The weekend of 10th May turned out to be one of the longest that I have had for sometime. I had starting preparing for it almost a week ago. I had a couple of guests coming to Malaysia. Pham Phan and wife were arriving on 10th May, landing in KLIA at 10.50am. This was their first visit to Malaysia. I have been meeting up with Pham all over Asia in the course of our work. Pham had been absolutely helpful in helping to raise the technical capability of the Support teams in Asia Pacific. And I have known him for uncountable years!! So when I heard that he was making a trip here, I offered to take him around for the weekend.

Upon their arrival, I whisked them off to One World hotel next to 1 Utama. After checking in, my family (wife and Alex) joined in for lunch - local Malacca food. Then It was off to Ipoh. My intentions were to show them a little bit of rural Malaysia. I turned off the highway at Tapah, took the trunk roads all the way to Ipoh. Along the way, we stopped at Gua Tempurung as I was looking for information to plan an outing there.

Main objective of the Ipoh trip was to visit the Sam Poh Tong caves. But we arrived late (5.30pm) and the darn temples along that stretch were all closed!! What a wasted journey. We ended up buying pomeloes and tidbits at the pomelo stalls just outside of the temple caves. Luckily my uncle lives in Ipoh. So I brought my guests (unannounced) to his house to show them how a relatively well off family lived. Being Americans of Vietnamese descent, they were in 2 minds. On the one hand, the American in them says you don't show up unannounced at anyone's home. On the other hand, the Asian in them knows that this is an accepted practice. In any case, my Uncle and Aunt were at home and welcomed them.

We had dinner in a restaurant recommended by my uncle (Sun Marpoh Restaurant - look for the captain - Ah Yew and say Dr. Tham asked me to go there!!) Good food and even better prices!! Took less than 1.5 hours to get them from Ipoh back to the hotel. It was also an opportunity to test my new Camry. Regular town driving so far had been 8.6km/ lit. The journey to Ipoh and back saw my consumption improve to 11.8km/ lit ((about 16.3 sen per km). But Saturday 10th May was not very productive.

Sunday 11th May - told them to wait at 10am in the hotel. Showed up on time and first stop was Selangor Pewter in Setapak.

Then I took them to my former landlady's house (unannounced again) to show them how the average Joe lived. From there, we visited the Hot Spring in Setapak before moving onto Batu Caves. After that it was Thean Hou temple and then to my house. All that completed by 2.30pm.

At 3pm, we left my house to go back to the hotel. They needed a breather and I needed to catch up with my second guest - Angela Ong who was suppose to arrive at One World before 3pm. Her flight was delayed and she ended up checking in around 4pm.

The night ended with a trip to Ijok to the New Beggar Chicken Restaurant. I was supposed to have 7 people for the meal. One of my other guest was my E-pal (like a pen pal, except that we had been communicating via the Internet) Alex Bunny. Unfortunately she had been having digestive problems and could not make it. Most people in the office declined the invitation due to Mother's Day. One who did accept did an FFK on me at the last minute as she went back to Malacca and could not make it back in time. SO we ended up with 5 - Pham and Wife, Angela, Ian Sik and me!

The food was worth it. I had to reserve the table and at least 3 of the main courses almost ONE week before the planned event. Right after we were seated, a wheelbarrow was pushed near to our table and the baked clayey thing lifted out. A couple ofworkers started the process of removing the clay covering and then serving the dishes to us.

We had Beggar Chicken

Beggar Rice

Beggar Pig Trotters (which was a mistake in the order. I ordered Pig Stomach Soup, but Pham took one look at the pig trotters and wanted it anyway)

Boiled Lettuce garnished with fried onions and Oyster Sauce

and Fried sizzled prawns.

And to end the day, a last minute addition to the itinerary was to look for fireflies. All 4 of them went for that. I had been on the sampan before so I ended up looking after the bags.

What a night!!