Korean BBQ @ Kangsane Restaurant, Ampang

The power cut on Saturday had minimal effect on us as we had planned to be out the whole day, including dinner with Elaine and family. Besides Elaine, there was her mum and dad of course. Tagging along were her aunt, her boyfriend and her brother and sister-in-law to be (soon, very soon).

It has been a very long time since I was in Korea. And Korean BBQ is something that I used to look forward to whenever I visited Seoul. So for this round, in view of my very much belated birthday as well as Grace's (also belated), I decided to treat Elaine's family to Korean BBQ. There is an enclave of Koreans near Ampang Point, Ampang. Along with that was a plethora of Korean restaurants, supermarkets and so on. Not having experienced any Korean BBQ in town, I asked around and search other blogs for write ups on Korean BBQ.

I settled for one called Kangsane. We had pork belly, marinated pork, marinated beef, chicken, 2 dishes of fried gyoza, 1 plate of steamed gyoza, lala soup and whole bunch of standard side dishes which includes the must have Korean kimchi. Besides having green tea, 6 of us opted for Korean beer. Not bad (the beer I mean).

The bill came to a whopping RM554.00 for 10 of us. Will not be having Korean for a long long while more!

Powerless for a day

Tenaga Nasional (National Electricity Board or TNB) cut the power to a couple of streets in my neighborhood, including to my house, on Saturday, 26th July. I never really noticed it until I was affected, that TNB has been upgrading the power cables in my neighborhood!! As I looked around, I saw that most streets already had their power cables upgraded and that we were amongst the last few streets to be upgraded.

One of the electricity poles is right in front of my house. The TNB truck came along, dropped off a huge roll of new cables and distributed it's workforce all along the stretch of street.

Then a smallish sized wireman climbed up the ladder, maneuvered for half an hour trying to cut the 5 cables (3 phase + street lighting + neutral ) and then gave up after cutting 1 cable. The rest of the job was done by the truck lift within 5 minutes.

Power was cutoff until almost 8pm. Darn!!

Sis and Brother-in-law will be visiting in August 2008

Towards the end of August, my mum will be turning 69!! She is already having mobility problems due to the drying of her knee joints and it is unlikely that she would be able to stand another trip to London to visit my younger sister, Chooi and her husband Stephen.

So this year, I am paying for my sister and brother-in-law to come to Malaysia in conjunction with my mum's birthday. Unlike an advertisement currently running on the idiot box, I do not have to borrow money from the bank to finance their travel. The photo above was taken in Nov 2004 the last time mum traveled to London. Due to some scheduled activities, both of them will be coming and going back on different days. Stephen is scheduled to arrive KLIA on 12th morning and Chooi on 16th morning. Chooi leaves on 21st and Stephen leaves on 2nd Sept. And to complicate matters, I am in Singapore from 17th to 29th August. Bummer!!

Regardless, I am still squeezing some time for them by taking leave on 12th to 15th, before I go off to Singapore on a business trip. I have already booked an apartment in Equatorial Hotel in Cameron Highlands from 13th to 15th Aug.

And I am also planning for a trip to Ijok for beggar chicken when I am back from Singapore (before Stephen departs home).

The last time they were in town was 10 years ago. That was when the Indonesian haze was the heaviest. That was when KL was seething with unrest due to the Anwar sodomy trial. Looks like not much has changed. 10 years later, Anwar is again facing allegations of sodomy. The difference today is that with wide access to the internet, more people are able to get both sides of the news instead of relying on the Government controlled media. And the opposition controls 5 states!

2 more weeks of waiting!!

Agilent After School (AAS) 2008

This year's AAS was at Sekolah Kebangsaan SS17 Subang Jaya (SK SS17). The lesson for this AAS was Newton's third law, i.e. for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Yeah - like if I slap someone, I can be sure that someone will give me a slap back with about the same strength!! But I don't think that is an example of Newton's law.

As school starts early for the morning sessions, the trainers and volunteers were scheduled to be in the school by 7.15am! And with the price of petrol today, we decided to car pool from the office. I was at the office by 6.05am to pick up my passengers by 6.30am. Even had time to squeeze in breakfast at the local coffee shop opposite the office. Marya, Elaine and Joseph pooled with me.

I was not supposed to be in town as I had a trip to Germany, but as fate would have it, all non essential travel was canceled. So I got my original role as the MC back with hardly a day to prepare. I flubbed the opening where the headmistress requested us to sing the national anthem followed by the doa (Islamic prayers). I totally overlooked that and went straight to introducing all the speech-makers, starting with the headmistress. Whoops!!! I think the headmistress isn't too happy with me for that!

We had 150 students to take care of - distributed over 16 teams. Some of the trainers said that teaching these students was more difficult than working. We even had a few kids crying because after all the effort they put in, their Newton rocket car just wouldn't move. As you can see from the people featured here, the trainers were totally absorbed and earnest in their assigned roles. Ee Chia was the only one whose ego was a little deflated. Some of the kids called her Aunty instead of kakak (big sister) or chegu (teacher). That's Ee Chia in the photo above!! Aunty-ish looking! Haha!!

Oh, I forgot to mention the project!! The kids were each given a piece of foam, some sticks, 4 round light weight disks (to be used as wheels), straws, scissors, glue and balloon. They are suppose to cut the foam to a kind of traingular shape, push the sticks through the straw, stick 2 wheels on each end and then stick that to the piece of foam. They would then have to stick another piece of straw to the body, with a balloon tied to one end. Once completed, they have to blow the balloon, put the whole contraption on the floor and as the air escape from the balloon, it will propel the "rocket" in the other direction. Hence the project name - Newton's rocket car. Some of the kids even attempted to place a double engine to their car (2 balloons instead of 1). The finale was to race the cars they made. 1 finalist was chosen from each team.

As one overused cliche on blogs goes - a picture is worth a thousand words!. So I have a few thousands here.

Bee Hive in fruit tree

I have a very fruitful chiku tree in my garden. Sorry - I have no idea what is the common name for a chiku. It is a fruit about the size of an egg, brownish color and when the fruit is ripe, it is sweet with a slightly woody taste. This particular tree has been fruiting sweeter than normal fruits.

Bees decided to make it's hive high up on the branches about 6 months ago. This swarm of bees have been making hives all over my garden and then abandoning them because they were too close to the ground. We kind of disturbed them whenever we wanted to prune the bushes.

Today, as I was trying to harvest some chikus, I accidentally came too close to the hive with the pole. The bees were super fast. Within 10 seconds (or less), they were swarming around my head. I honestly did not even see them coming at me until I heard buzzing around my head. Ran as fast as I could - but still got a couple of bee stings in my right ear lobes.Last time I got stung must have been more than 40 years ago!!