Happy Chinese New Year everyone!

Before the new year period draws to a close, I would like to wish everybody happy new year, and have a prosperous new year ahead!

I apologize for being quiet the past few months. Work and other matters have kept me rather busy in recent times. Just to update, I had a good overseas trip in January to China, which I hope to post at a later date.

Back to the topic, I want to share some photos of my new year reunion dinner. There were other photos taken over the new year period (bakkwa and all), but the quality isn't so good. This new year we decided to have steamboat for the reunion dinner. Steamboat was chosen because of its' simple preparation method, high interactivity, and considering my sister's request for a 'light' meal. Boy, she is so wrong about the last point. Our stomachs were close to bursting by the time dinner ended (at 11pm!).

Okay, enjoy the photos.

Our new year 'goodies' that kept us munching away throughout the new year holidays.

As you can see above, we had a good selection of new year goodies this year. In the photos: pineapple tarts, mandarins, love letters, and shrimpt crackers. Not shown: 1kg of bakkwa (meat jerky).

Beef and his good friend, pork

The full spread of the steamboat dinner

Remembering Unity

Brick stones marks the route of the wall

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9 November 1989. This very day twenty years ago marked the beginning of an end. For twenty eight years the people of Berlin have lived divided as Eastern and Western Berliners. In the beginning this wall represented the ideological difference of the East and West. But as the years went by (and especially near its fall), the wall became a symbol of resistance of the people, and their desire to reunite with loved ones beyond the border.

The famous Checkpoint Charlie, now a tourist attraction

Although the wall is only confined to Berlin, it represented the reality at a larger scale. The world that was divided in two, as though there was an invisible wall that separates countries, and death strips that prevented people of either sides from coming over. The fall of the Berlin wall signified the end of that invisible barrier as well, for the Eastern Bloc would cease to exist not long after.

A temporary exhibit, memorial to those who perished trying to cross the wall

If there is one thing I admire most about the Germans is that they have no fear to face their past. The last century of German history is undoubtedly filled with grim events. Two World Wars, the Holocaust, and the Berlin wall are perhaps more than enough of ‘bad history’ for any country. But unlike some who try to cover up or white-wash their past, the Germans go all out to remind themselves of the past, both glorious and grisly.

Sections of the old Berlin wall still standing today

A walk through Berlin will reveal this. The Reichstag (parliament building), silent witness to World War 2, still has its walls riddled with bullet (despite sporting a new glass dome). The pedestrian crossings in East Berlin are maintained to their old Soviet-era style. There is a Holocaust memorial in downtown Berlin. And of the Berlin wall; the Berliners kept several sections standing, and drew a path along the old wall location with brick stones. Sniper guard towers still stand tall along what used to be parts of the ‘death strip’. All these reminders, I hope, will continue to open our eyes to the horrors of conflict, and the power of unity.

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A sentry tower, still standing tall

Darn, my phone is dead (long live the phone!)

My dead HTC Dual, RIP my good man

As fate dictated, yesterday I was trying to send message from my HTC dual and realized that the touch screen has stopped working. "Okay, we have a problem" I thought. For the past few weeks, I have several problems with my 2 year old phone. It first began when people couldn't hear me clearly during calls. Then it got slightly worse, I also can't hear the other side. However, if I put the call on speaker phone there is no problem. Soon after, the touch screen loses sensitivity intermittently. The final straw as you can guess, came yesterday. With no touch screen I couldn't send out sms (no way to click the 'send' button), and no had way to activate speaker phone. Meaning I'm deaf during calls.

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So I opened my phone storage box at home, and took out my spare phone. It's so old you probably wouldn't see anyone else using it at the moment. The Panasonic GD-67, released in 2003, is unquestionably durable, serving full fledged for over 2 years, and being a backup phone for the past 4 years with no servicing. Myself, my 2 cousins, and my maid has used this phone at some point in time. It doesn't have major problem, even the battery still last pretty well.

The GD67, always ready for duty

The secret I believe lies in its' basic design, candybar. My last 2 phones were of clamshell and sliding design respectively. The constant movement of the parts seem to contribute to wear and tear, therefore these phones ended their service before their 2 year allotment is up (i time myself to change phone after 2 years, or when they died on me, whichever is earlier). So, you can bet that my next phone will be a candybar.

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I'll send my HTC for servicing soon, and it will then sit next to good old Panasonic, ready for duty anytime the need arise.

Blues came from Asia?

I recently read a comment posted in Youtube, by someone from Africa, that after viewing a traditional song from Rote, he/she is left wondering if Blues music "really takes its root in Africa". Indeed, several others left similar sounding comments on that particular video, claiming that the song sounds "kinda bluesy". Now, I am quite fond of Blues (which is largely played by African Americans) for its upbeat tempo, and the unique and somewhat raspy voice that many of the Blues singers have.

In the video, the singer is accompanied by his Sasando, a traditional string musical instrument from the island of Rote. It is maybe the long lost cousin of the guitar. You can see a drawing of it below, placed next to the ikat cloth on an old Indonesian banknote. The thing that looks like cloth wrapping on the instrument is actually a resonator made of palm leaves, quite ingenious don't you think? From some of the Youtube videos, modern Sasandos come with a plug for amplifiers.

To play the instrument, one just need to pluck the strings. Sounds easy? it actually looks easy too, because each fingers only need to pluck one string (well, that's what I deduce after seeing the videos). But I'm not too sure if this will be easier than learning to play guitar.

Coming back to the topic of Blues, I don't actually see how the song in the video sounds 'Bluesy'. I don't know how to describe the sound of the instrument, but the tune played sounds Asian, at least in my opinion. The singer on the other hand, sounds like a Native American. Seen a few more of Sasando videos, (one observation, the amazing grace seems to be one popular song to be played on a Sasando) and they still don't sound like Blues to my ears. But don't take my words for it, you might want to drop by youtube and see for yourself. Let me know how you find it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gB8Wy7tlsxo

Really Easy Recipes: Garlic Bread

Garlic bread is versatile, it goes well with many western dishes (from pizza to steak), or it can be served as appetizer on its own. Best of all it is so easy to make, it is on my top 10 list of easiest dish to prepare. Sure, ready to use garlic spread is easy to find, but making it from scratch is fun.

For the Spread:

150g Butter (I use the salted version)
3 cloves of garlic
Dried Italian herb mix
Salt & Pepper

Preparation:
Put the butter in a bowl at room temperature to let it soften a bit. Meanwhile finely chop 3 cloves of garlic. If you don’t like raw garlic taste, you might want to fry your garlic a little. Heat up oil on a frying pan over small fire, and toss the garlic for 1-2 minutes. Let it cool a bit before adding it to the butter. Sprinkle a pinch of salt and some pepper (to taste). I’d put half tablespoon of salt and half that amount of pepper. Add some Italian herb mix for the ‘herby’ taste. Mix well and voila, your garlic spread is ready.

Now slice some bread (you can use white bread slices too), and layer it generously with the garlic butter spread. Heat up your oven to 200 degrees, then place the bread slices at a high rack, closer to the heat coils at the top of the oven. It shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes before the butter layered crust turn darker. It is time to remove them from the rack and serve.

Brunch at Relish (27/06/2009)

Relish Breakfast Platter

Eggs Benedict

Birthday Birthday

Happy birthday to me!

Just added one more to the number of years I’ve been around. As a celebratory post, I will describe what went on during my birthday this year.

The day started just around noon. I met up with Dear and we went for lunch at Din Tai Fung, their Jurong Point outlet. Because there are just two of us around we shared a couple of dishes, notably their famed xiao long bao (steamed pork dumplings with savory sauce inside), pork rib soup, some sliced beef cold dish, and prawn and egg fried rice. In general the food matched up to our standard. The xiao long bao is my usual pick at the restaurant. To eat it, carefully place one on your spoon (not to let the sauce drip out), eat with a dash of vinegar and slices of ginger. yummy! The pork rib soup is surprisingly tasty. I say surprisingly because the soup itself seemed very simple, yet the pork rib and (what seems to be) bitter gourd makes great combination.

Our lunch spread

Xiao Long Bao

The fried rice however, was a little disappointing. Dear took a bite of one particular prawn that stinks - presumably it has turned bad, so from that point on eating the prawns felt a little like taking a stroll across a minefield. Unnecessarily stressful. Otherwise the fried rice was fine.

We attempted to bake our own version of black forest cake, one of my favourite of all time, and the result was “F”. Unfortunately that’s “F” for “fail”, not “fantastic”. Well, it was our first time baking any kind of cake, so it’s understandable that so many things did not turn out right. For example the filling was too wet, and the cream used to plaster the cake was too soft, so in the end it looked like mount Black forest was spewing hot cherry flavoured lava. In our defence, the cake actually tasted like black forest cake, although looks wise it was a disaster zone.

In the end the cake didn't look (or taste) so bad

Dinner was meant to be special, and we planned to have it at home. Knowing that we were baking cake we wanted to keep things simple. In the end, we chose to have steamboat.

Steamboat. Enough to feed an army

After dinner we relaxed for a while, slacking around while I open my birthday present. Nice! it was a Tintin book and a travel guide. Tintin and the Alph-art was the last in the series, uncompleted before Herge's death. Dear also got me the lonely planet guide to Eastern Europe, knowing that I've long dreamt of going there. Thanks dear!

Afterwards we went out to watch “Land of the lost”. Dear said that it was an entertaining “C grade” movie. I think it was probably closer to B grade, but has more than its fair share of absurdly funny moments. In one short word “Insane”. Loved the moments when they were trying to swing to a tree to escape being trapped by vines, and instead swung towards the open jaws of a hungry T-Rex.

Well, like any good party, the day (and this post) has to end.