Friday - destress day (with a touch of Saturday)

I noticed for 3 consecutive weeks now, I have been using Fridays as a de-stressing day. Right after work, I will invite some office colleagues for an outing.

Last Friday, I managed to get TOC, Looi and Nick. We went to Mid valley for dinner at Purple Cane - a first for all of them. I am surprise!!! Purple Cane serves food laced or marinated with Chinese tea. TOC was complaining to no one in particular that her Big Zero (Dah Ling in Cantonese) had not brought her to Mid Valley for ages. TOC - you need to complain to him, not to me.

At Purple Cane, I ordered a Tofu dish, Chicken with mushrooms marinated in a fragrant rice wine, a soup - served from a Chinese teapot (quaint!!) and a dish of 4 vegetables fried together with a hint of some Chinese tea. There was also a dish of sliced fish with gratinated ginger (yummy) and even the rice is cooked with tea. All agreed the food was good. And we took our time sipping tea after the main meal and dessert - as should be the case to enjoy Chinese tea.After that I volunteered to take them for fish spa. That's the place where we spend money to feed somebody's fishes with our feet. As it was 8.30 pm, the crowd has virtually disappeared and we had the place almost all to ourselves. Looi just came back from Shanghai where the weather was cold and probably dry. His feet has scabs of dried scaly skin and he was wondering if the fishes would eat that off. They did!!

All of them were initially hesitant to put their feet in the pool, resulting in all the fishes coming to my feet. And my first 5 minutes are always the most ticklish. After about 10 minutes, both TOC and Looi could tolerate the fishes, but Nick still could not. That's the first time i have seen someone who was so stressed out by the fishes that his head was breaking out in sweat!!. James Ng - you should have joined us. Besides the fishes, there were pretty girls there that you could have befriended - like Venky Tan here.
Eat your heart out!

Updated on Sunday
Technically, the next event was not a Friday event, but since it will only take a paragraph, I am adding it here

Saturdays, we resumed our badminton sessions at Khoo's place. I expect most of the people are going to have sore arms, legs and butts by the next day. It's been ages since we played. The nets at the badminto hall were strung up in a strange way. the space between the courts are normally used to get back and forth for the players. Someone tied the ends of the net to the next court. As a result, you have an almost invisible string strung across the passage way. Ian was the first to get hit for not noticing the string and ran right into it almost garroting himself.

Ken followed close behind and in his enthusiasm to get the game going, literally jumped onto string, bringing down the net on the last court. But he was not as badly hurt as Ian.

After the game, we adjourned to Annie 1 and had a good laugh.

A fruitful Saturday

Last week, I managed to harvest more than 40 Chiku fruits from my tree in the garden. We only managed to eat about 10. the rest, my mum took to her ex-boss. This morning, I harvested about 30 more fruits. I had the fruit plucker repaired to prevent the fruits from dropping to the ground. If the fruit landed on earth, that was okay. If it hit stones or cement flooring, then it cracks and is no good.

This time around, the Chiku trees did not bear as much fruits as in the past 2 years. I remember that last year, we managed to harvest hundreds of fruits. We were giving bag loads away to neighbours and friends.

The photo above has an egg placed there to give you a perspective of how large is the fruit.

By now, some are you are probably wondering - what are Chikus. They are also known as Sapodilla (Manilkara zapota). Sapodilla is known as chikoo ("चिक्कू" or "chiku," "चीकू,") and sapota in India, sofeda in Eastern India & Bangladesh, sawo in Indonesia, hồng xiêm (lit. "Siamese persimmon") or xa pô chê in Vietnam, lamoot (ละมุด) in Thailand and Cambodia, sapodilla in Guyana sapathilla or rata-mi in Sri Lanka, níspero in Colombia, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Dominican Republic and Venezuela, nípero in Cuba and Dominican Republic, dilly in The Bahamas, naseberry in the rest of the Caribbean, and sapoti in Brazil. In Kelantanese Malay, the fruit is called "sawo nilo" which is closer to the original name than the standard Malay "ciku". In Chinese, the name translates roughly to Ginseng Fruit (人參果子), though this is also the name used for the pepino, an unrelated fruit. All that from here.

Problem with Chikus is that it is near impossible to have them ripen on the tree. As soon as it is matured (but not soften yet), I have had birds, shrews, squirrels and even civet cats visiting my garden to have a feast. So we harvest them when they get bigger than the largest grade chicken egg. The fruit is egg shaped and brownish in colour.

Once the matured fruits are plucked, we clean the skin by washing it and then dry the lot under the sun for a day. Leave the fruits in the rice bin or a basket and over time (from a day to a week), the fruit will soften. Once soften, you peel off the skin and eat it. the chikus in my garden are much sweeter than the ones I get from the market. I like mine served chilled (not frozen - just cold).

Delicious!

Valentine's Day 2009

This year, 14th Feb is significant for a number of my colleagues.

Early in the morning, soon-to-be mama Miji (Yoke to my Indian team) was late to work as her route to work was disrupted by the cycle race - Tour D'Langkawi. As a result, a bunch of flowers came in for her before she reached the office. It was from her husband. Ian decided to hide the flowers. So when Miji arrived, all she saw was an empty desk. The jig was almost up as TOC, 2 cubicles away was not aware the flowers were hidden. She called Miji and asked her if she liked the flowers and how she felt. Having just endured a bad traffic jam, Auntie Miji could not make head or tails of what TOC was saying. When she turned around, a bunch of us were surrounding her with cameras on hand. What in the world was going on?? When the flowers were brought out for her, you could see that she had mixed emotions.

Next one up was TOC.Her beau (lovingly referred to as Old Coconut in Cantonese) was in Shanghai for technical training. That did not stop him from asking Elaine to get the "ONE who completes him" a bouquet for Valentine Day. Elaine asked me if I could help her get to a florist. I suggested we look at the ones near the office first. Eventually, we decided on a bouquet of roses with a bear. Fresh flowers die out eventually, so having the bear means that there would be a keepsake after the flowers were withered. The card was signed - secret admirer. TOC nagged everyone to tell her who was the sender. She just could not believe that her old coconut could be so romantic!!. In the end the story had spread to Shanghai and then back to Malaysia and probably to Singapore too. The jig was up and I guess the old coconut admitted to the deed

Ian was also preparing something for his new romance. This was their first Valentine that they would be celebrating and he was meticulous in preparing the whole event. As a result, I am not allowed to post this blog until Saturday or Sunday. Sen was known to surf my blog occasionally. Ian started with this pot of African Violet. He had accidentally left his wallet nearby and I suggested that maybe he should give it with the wallet (big grin on my face). He went one better and placed his credit cards on the plant and cash around the pot. All the girls in the office agreed that that would be the best gift to receive!!! Word has it that the 2 lovebirds will spend V day in the Japanese restaurant in Bukit Tinggi. Sen, such love and dedication from Ian - say YES to him when the time comes.

The evening ended with Elaine, TOC, James N, Nick T and myself going to dinner at Marche. Same old same old. Had my mushroom soup and sauteed mushrooms. Some of them had sausages (Beef, Chicken Cheese and Lamb). James even had half a roast poultry!!. He seemed to enjoy it.

Happy Valentines Day everybody!!

On the 13th Day of CNY 2009

Alex wanted to see the Pink Panther 2 in the cinema since it was announced to have started screening on 5th Feb. So I got tickets for 1pm. His mum went for a ex primary schoolmates get together in Rawang, so it was just the 2 of us. Show was hilarious if you like the humor that is typical of the bungling Clouseau. Obviously, Alex enjoyed himself very much.

Then we rushed home as Vincent Wong and wife (the newly wedded couple) said he was coming around 5pm. He did drop by, chatted a bit, pluck of my chiku fruits (not much left this time of the year) and then left.

I tried a new juice recipe that Elaine recommended - the 5 green juice recipe. I put in 1 piece of dwarf bitter gourd, 1 cucumber, 1 green capsicum, 2 stalks of celery and 1 green apple into my juicer. The end result tasted a bit bland - what do you expect - all these green do not have a savory flavor to it! Elaine says I should use more apples. I'll do that next time. This concoction is suppose to help lower blood pressure.

About 1 hour after downing this (and it made 2 large cups of juice!!0, my stomach started growling. Not wanting to risk gastric problems like the last time, I called up V and M if they wanted dinner (yes - I was planning to skip dinner). So we ended up at a place that is popular for Teo Chew Porridge. It is near my house (somewhere near Taman Yulek).

Then we had to rush home again as my uncle and cousins and their families from Serdang had arrived. With a big crowd in the house, it would not be fair to leave my mum to attend to this crowd. My maternal cousin and partner also turned up. Glad to have them visiting as there was still a lot of CNY snacks that needed to be polished off. The cleared up at least 2 containers worth of snacks!

another long day!

On the Seventh day of CNY 2009

Today is the 7th day of CNY and it is also the birthday of everybody. That's Yan Yat (in Cantonese), Ren Ri (in Mandarin). Happy Birthday EVERYONE!!! In case you don't know, CNY is celebrated over 15 days. Certain days holds special significance for certain provinces, e.g. the Hokkien (or people of Fujian origin) makes the 9th day a bigger do than the 1st day. And the 15th day is the Valentine day for the Chinese. That's when the unmarried ladies throw mandarin oranges into the river and wish for a life partner. Apparently this is very much a Malaysian thing. The ladies would (nowadays) write their telephone numbers on the oranges and potential suitors will wait at the rivers to collect the oranges.

Today's significant visitor was one of my mum's previous employers. My mum was looking after their invalid mum for a while. Well, my mum is retired now - bad knees and blood pressure problems that needs to be medicated. This family visits us without fail every year.

At 7pm, I had arranged to have a "birthday" dinner with Vincent and Madeline and their parents. The dinner was at Woh Kei in Taman Connaught. Food was so so only - so nothing much to write about.

Ah.... have to start work again tomorrow. Sigh!!