My Very First Blog

1. Hi everyone! As you are reading this, I am probably enjoying myself in Bali soaking in the sunshine, or admiring the beautiful sunset or simply having a scrumptious meal! Are you missing me yet? Haha!

2. If you missed my previous post 'Random Notes 8', do go back there and read about the current contest I am having right now on my blog. Leave the most number of comments and win souvenirs from Bali! Terms and conditions are in my previous post so read them if you are interested.

3. Talking about contests, today I am going to announce the 3 lucky winners of my Versus Tag contest. Before I left for Bali, I had written all participants' names into a piece of paper each, mixed them up in a container and asked my brother to pick 3 names at random.

So these are the three names he picked!



Are you one of them? If yes, congratulations! Please email me your address so that I can mail you the prizes! But of course, you have to wait till I return from my holidays in Bali first before I can send them to you, so be patient yes? : )

Oh, if you want to know what the prizes are, sorry can't tell you now, haha! Will let you know once I return! ; )

4. I love to look at the sky and I enjoy watching the clouds. Call me weird, but I am just fascinated by them. I even enjoy watching those thick, black clouds right before a thunderstorm! Here are some photos I captured last week.



These were the clouds above me right before a huge thunderstorm!



I was at a friend's house and I could see the looming dark clouds above his house.



I was captivated by the beautiful sky! And of course, I couldn't wait for the rain to fall! Haha!



5. I seldom eat at DOME cafe, but when I do, I always choose to eat their caesar pesto salad. I just love it!



Have you eaten at DOME before? Do you like the food there?



The prices are pretty expensive, but I like the portions - they are HUGE!!

6. Do you believe in ghosts? Last year I went to walk the suspension bridge at FRIM and captured this photo on my camera phone.



Do you see that lady with long hair wearing dark glasses and dressed in a robe on the right? Can you see it? Or is it just my imagination? Perhaps it was the light playing tricks on my eyes!

You know what, I think after I return from Bali, I am going to make another trip to FRIM. Let's see if I can capture that same image again. It's sure going to be exciting! Enjoy your weekend, everyone! : )

1. By the time you read this post, I am already in Bali. It's my very first trip to Bali and I hope I will have a great time there! I will be back some time next week so in the meantime, I will be missing all of you and your blogs!

2. Since I am in Bali, I will not be able to activate my wealth star tomorrow Friday : (

For those of you who are interested in using feng shui to attract wealth, you can activate your wealth star between 5am-7am at the NorthWest or East sector of your home (except if you have a Snake in your Bazi Chart). For more details, you can read my post Feng Shui 2010 According To Joey Yap.

Luckily for me and for those of you who cannot activate it tomorrow for whatever reason, Joey had given us another date to activate our wealth star, and that is on June 9th, 2010, so do take note! : )

3. Yippee!! I won a Sony Digital Still Camera from Standard Chartered recently. I happily went to collect the camera at The Curve yesterday.



What do you think of this camera?



But for my Bali photo shoots, I think I will stick to my trusted Panasonic Lumix LX3 : )

4. Do you like Him Heang biscuits? A friend bought me these two biscuits from the one and only Him Heang outlet in the world, which is at Jalan Burma in Penang.



On the left is the famous Tau Sar Pneah and on the right is the delicious Beh Teh Saw.

The Beh Teh Saw biscuits were individually wrapped. There were 8 pieces in a box priced at RM6.50.



I took a bite of the Beh Teh Saw and it was yummy!!



I also adore the Tau Sar Pneah or Tambun biscuits as it's popularly known. Unlike their rival Ghee Heang, Him Heang's Tau Sar Pneah are much nicer and they melt in your mouth. Simply yummy!



Here, let me magnify so you can drool over it, haha!



Each box of Tambun biscuits contains 32 pieces and is priced at RM9.50.

5. Recently I received a Thank You letter from WWF. It's always nice to receive a Thank You letter, don't you agree?



I donate to WWF every month as I believe in saving the animals and the endangered species.

And also because I am a panda. LOL!



At first, I thought donating to organizations like WWF was a waste of money because most of the money would be given to the marketing company that runs the fundraising, but it is now confirmed that WWF receives the entire amount of our donations. The marketing company only get a one time fixed fee from WWF's pre-allocated fundraising budget.

So if you like to donate and save the animals, please click HERE.

6. Recently, I received a surprise gift from blogger Ladyviral. She's now in Singapore so it's no wonder she sent me this!



It's a Merlion keychain! Thanks for the gift and the nicely written letter, Ladyviral! : )

7. Since I am in Bali now, I am going to shop around for some souvenirs. I am going to give away these souvenirs to 3 readers who leave the most comments on this post and the next upcoming post scheduled on March 27th.

Terms and conditions are as follows:
- All comments must be related to the topics in the relevant posts. Comments that are not related will not be counted.

- Winners will be chosen based on the total number of comments they leave in this post and the next upcoming post on March 27th.

- You cannot leave more than 10 consecutive comments at one go. The 11th comment and thereafter will not be counted. If you have more things to say, take a break and return later to leave more comments.

- This contest is open to everyone from anywhere in the world.

- This contest ends on 11.59pm on 29th March 2010.

GOOD LUCK and HAVE FUN!! : )

PS: I am going to announce the 3 winners of my Versus Tag (Najib vs Mahathir) contest in my next post. If you participated in that contest, stay tuned! You might just be one of the lucky winners!!

It's now 3.02am.

For the past one hour, I have been trying to access my posts without success. Despite reloading and refreshing countless times, I have not been able to go to my list of posts.

There is no problem writing a new post. But once I click "Publish Post" I will get an error message from Blogger. I will never know if my post is successfully published until I see it appears on my blog.

I have written two new posts to be scheduled for today at a later time and for Saturday (March 27th). But the posts were not really complete and I have yet to proofread them. Furthermore, I still have a few more photos to be included in my next post.

But sadly, there is NO WAY to do edit my 2 upcoming posts.

There is no way because I SIMPLY COULD NOT ACCESS THEM. Clicking on the "Edit Posts" button on my Blogger Dashboard resulted in an error message.

Clicking on the refresh button was of no help at all, and I had been doing that for the past one hour!

I can only hope that my post which will be coming out later today will turn out well. The same with my scheduled post on Saturday.

Maybe it's time I get my own domain and use WordPress platform.

All I know is that I have complained to Blogger many times but they have not been able to solve the problem. Either they are not doing their best or they don't care.

In any case, Blogger sucks BIG TIME!

Enough is enough! I'm giving up on Blogger!!

During the recent Chinese New Year, I went 'lou sang' with a group of friends at Yin Her Restaurant at Kampung Baru Sungai Buloh.



For the uninitiated, 'lou sang' is a Cantonese term which means the act of tossing and mixing the yee sang ingredients to attract good health, wealth, prosperity and good luck for the year.



This yee sang dish originated from my very own country Malaysia! How's that for Malaysia Boleh? : )



The act of tossing and mixing the various ingredients was so much fun! I thoroughly enjoyed it!

Here's my own plate of yee sang after all the tossing and mixing. It was delicious!!



Of course I went for second round simply because I knew I wouldn't be able to eat this delicious dish after the Chinese New Year. Gosh! I have to wait one full year before having the chance to taste it again!

There is however, one problem with this yee sang dish. It was supposed to be salmon yee sang but I could hardly find any salmon fish in it! Why must the restaurant be so stingy with the salmon fish? Is it really that expensive?!

This is the menu for the set Chinese New Year lunch we ordered. The set was priced at RM498 nett.



Notice the wrong spelling for the word 'salmon'. Haha!

And what the heck is 'bomboo' for the second dish? LOL!

Well, I really should not be laughing at their poor English, since I am a hopeless banana and do not know how to read those Mandarin words! Anyone care to tell me what those Mandarin words are - whether they sound cute or funny?

In case you are non-Chinese and wondering why I said that, well, we Chinese like to give funny and unique names to our dishes!

Our second dish, braised shark's fin soup came soon after.



It was yummy! Look at my bowl of shark's fin with huge chunks of crab meat!



I actually prefer crab meat to shark's fin! I wonder why shark's fins are so popular. We should be saving the sharks instead of killing them just for their fins!!

Next on the list was pomfret fish, which was my absolute favourite dish!



Maybe I am a fan of anything to do with steamed fish but I just love this dish! So yummy and the meat so smooth and tasty!



Next, we had salted egg prawns.



I love prawns but I just didn't like this prawn dish.



Then came the herbal chicken.



The taste was OK but I found it a little too oily for my liking.



After that, there seemed to be some sort of mix up in the dishes. Instead of this vegetables dish with bean curd skin and mushrooms...



...we were given this yam dish with assorted vegetables, prawns and nuts (I invented this name as I do not know how to call it! Haha!)



When they finally realised their mistake, it was too late! We had already eaten half of the dish!



Some of my friends just could not complete a meal without a bowl of rice. In Chinese I call them 'fan tong'! Haha!

And so we had fried rice. Although I would have preferred waxed meat rice!



You know why? Because no one, absolutely no one, could cook fried rice like my mom! Her fried rice to me at least, is the best fried rice in the world! Bar none! Haha!



Actually, this fried rice was not too bad, but still stopped short of my mom's standard. LOL!

If you notice from the menu, it was listed as 'Prosperity Steamed Rice With Waxed Meat'. (Ignore their horrendous spelling!) Some friends requested for fried rice so we had it changed. What a bummer!

Finally it was time for desserts! And out came this dish.



Why were there so many fat little rabbits on the plate? Oh my!

I purposely placed the two rabbits in front to face me so that I was not facing their asses. Haha!



But look! Some of the rabbits were deformed! Yikes!

The deformed rabbits posed with the chinese pastry (wo peng) and an angpow I received during the lunch.



I bit into the poor little rabbit. There was lotus fillings inside. Yummy!



Can anyone guess I bit off the rabbit's head or ass? Haha!

After that, the iced longan with sea coconut came.



I am not particularly fond of this dessert. Reason being I think it's the cheapest dessert of the lot. Haha!



By the way, I could not find any sea coconut inside! Just longans and more longans, and even more than longans were the ice! Cheapskate dessert - that's what I shall call it. LOL!



Overall, not a bad restaurant really. There were quite a lot of people coming here for lunch but it was not too noisy, thank goodness!



I think this restaurant offers quite good value for your money. I may just return for lunch or dinner one of these days.

By the way, you can go fishing after your meal here. There's a fishing pond here though I did not take any photos of it.

And oh! I just discovered this restaurant was featured in the Ho Chak! TV show on 8tv. Click HERE to watch it.

In Part 1, I blogged about Luna Bar. Now it's SkyBar's turn.

Located on the 33rd floor of Traders Hotel (next to KL Convention Centre), SkyBar was every bit as impressive as Luna Bar, if not more.

I was there quite early at about 6pm and there were still a few people swimming in the pool. Yes, just like Luna Bar, there's also a swimming pool in SkyBar. However, no one swims there in the later part of the evening or rather, no one is allowed to swim during that time.





Can you see the Twin Towers from here? Don't you just love to sit beside the glass windows with those comfortable cushions looking out at the magnificent Twin Towers?

SkyBar looks even better at night!





I love the ambience here, especially with the beautiful Twin Towers in the background!

Me and my friend ordered some nuts and a strawberry shake each. No alcoholic drinks for me as it was too freaking expensive and I needed to drive later!





Oh well, maybe I will just drop by one of these days to have an alcoholic drink when I am in the mood for it! Haha!

From where we were seated, I could have a bird's eye view of the park and waterfall below.





This waterfall is located at the park opposite the KL Convention Centre.

I took a picture of one part of the waterfall earlier when I was near the park.





From up here, I could also see the fountain and lake outside Suria KLCC.





Oh, and the swimming pool too!





I must bring a binocular next time to enjoy watching from afar!





As the sun began to set, it was time to take some photos of the Twin Towers.





And the KL Tower as well!





Or how about combining Twin Towers and KL Tower in one photo?





We continued clicking away like nobody's business. I think those people who saw us must have thought we were tourists!

Wow! This handphone shoots out flames! And it's directed at the Twin Towers! Haha!





A close-up shot of the Twin Towers (with Public Bank in the background)





Have any of you went up there at that bridge connecting the two towers?

I just love the Twin Towers - it is my favourite building and I am so glad our former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir had the foresight to build it! Imagine KL without the Twin Towers!

OK, just in case this post is going to turn into a post on the Twin Towers, let me get back to the topic at hand here that is, SkyBar vs Luna Bar.





So which one of these two roof-top bars is the better one? Let me see....

1. Both Luna Bar and SkyBar have very nice ambience. But SkyBar definitely trumps Luna Bar when it comes to the view outside the window! Probably that's the reason why I posted so many photos of the Twin Towers! Haha!

Besides, you can only see ONE of the two towers at Luna Bar. At SkyBar, the sight of both the towers are so magnificent it's hard not to be awed!





2. Although SkyBar has magnificent views, I can't help feeling a bit disappointed that they do not have an open roof-top bar like Luna Bar! In this regard, I think Luna Bar trumps SkyBar!

3. I think Skybar is probably more popular as it seems to fill up pretty fast compared to Luna Bar. Or is it because Luna Bar is bigger and can accommodate more people? Not sure about this, but one thing is for sure. Luna Bar has a RM50 cover charge on weekends after 9.30pm. That's not good!





4. I have problem finding Luna Bar in the Pacific Regency Hotel. It was complicating going up two different lifts and a series of staircases! Directing people to Luna Bar would be such a hassle! In contrast, going up to SkyBar was a breeze!

5. The service for both Luna Bar and SkyBar was generally OK. But I was appalled when the waitress at Luna Bar actually gave us the bill without us requesting for it and she also took away my drink before I gave her the permission to do so! How horrible!

I could not really comment on the prices and quality of food and drinks as I did not eat or drink a lot at both of these bars. Although I must say the pizza at Luna Bar was really nice!





My conclusion? Although different people may have different opinions, to me at least, I think SkyBar is the better of the two roof-top bars. What about you?