Introduction to Mahjong

I was finally introduced to Mahjong yesterday by a friend. She started playing since Primary 5 (about 11 years old!) because her aunties taught her when they lacked of one "kaki" (play mate) to start the game. It's quite interesting and the pleasure to touch and feel each cubes/tiles while playing simply give one the satisfaction - especially when one get to slam the tiles and announced oneself won the game, as pointed out by my friend ;p

At the very beginning, it can be a little confusing. There are quite a number of terms to remember and not to forget the rules of the game, just like any other games. Rules, rules, rules. That make a game more interesting and challenging, don't you agree?

There were 6 of us, where one of them were the "sifu" (master or guru). The friend who came the latest had the best luck! Upon arrival, she already won the first round and instantly, she won the second round! That made her winning 2 rounds in a row! Speaking of good luck, she certainly had lucky stars shining upon her. She had the best arrangement of tiles. Some of us simply get tiles that were nonsensical :

We had made an "appointment" to learn the advanced level in our next gathering. I am not too sure if I had mastered the beginner level (We only played for about an hour and half only as our "sifu" needed to make a move to her grandma's birthday dinner). Anyway, we will definitely have a good laugh the next time, like we did yesterday. What a perfect way to spend a Saturday afternoon ;)

Jay in Hip Hop dance move

I have no idea what had gotten into me but here I am, watching videos after videos at Youtube. I happened to stumble onto Jay's video "《给我一首歌的时间》".

The fact that Jay is an icon of R&B and Hip Hop in the Chinese music industry, dressed up in Hip Hop style and he grew up in the western culture (to be exact, United States), I thought that he was a great dancer. Boy, was I wrong. My friend who is obsessesed a huge fan of Jay once told me he didn't know how to dance. Thinking back, it's true that I hardly saw him dancing in music videos nor in concerts. However, he picked up dancing in the recent years.

Jay is seen making some Hip Hop dance moves in one of his recent video "《给我一首歌的时间》".



The heroine in the music video is extremely gorgeous(!!), eh? The scene which she swam in the waters is breath-taking - what a beautiful sight ;)

Next video, "說好的幸福呢" is another romantic song, however, the pace is slower. No more dance moves. It's one of his many music videos which he played the piano. Jay plays the piano under the snow. The music video is rather peaceful and again, the heroine is pretty but I think the heroine in "《给我一首歌的时间》" is prettier.

Cries In A Distance vs Always Online

My sister was surfing for JJ Lin's songs when we came across a song title "Cries In A Distance". Curious, we decided to listen. It's actually an English version of the song "Always On Line". The lyrics remind me of a story about war or terrorist attack.

I "google"-ed about this song to find out that the song is indeed about war. Here is the video



....and the lyrics as follow. I find it rather touching.

Cries in a distance
Can't stop the tremble
I'm just awaiting my turn
Hiding will never
Save me forever
The guns gonna get me for sure
Dear God I pray why won't you be my friend
Come to me and take my hand
Like mama would say
Everything will be okay
All I hear is 3 2 1
The scream from the guns
And then 1by1
No one gets to run
Someone's dad or mom
Sister, brother and son
No…no…
All I feel is 1 2 3
My tears start to bleed
Smell of roses on my feet
I feel sore…
I fall…
I call…
I crawl…
Cries in a distance
Can't stop the tremble
I'm just awaiting my turn
Hiding will never
Save me forever
The guns gonna get me for sure
Dear God I pray why won't you be my friend
Come to me and take my hand
Like mama would say
Everything will be okay
All I hear is 3 2 1
The scream from the guns
And then 1by1
No one gets to run
Someone's dad or mom
Sister, brother and son
No…no…
All I feel is 1 2 3
My tears start to bleed
Smell of roses on my feet
I feel sore…
I fall…
I call…
I crawl…
All I hear is 3 2 1
The scream from the guns
And then 1by1
No one gets to run
Someone's dad or mom
Sister, brother and son
All I feel is 1 2 3
My tears start to bleed
Smell of roses on my feet
I feel sore…
I fall…
I call…
I crawl…
I feel sore…
I fall…
I call…
I crawl…

From the album Sixology, both songs Cries In A Distance and Always Online share the same instrument and melody but the theme for both songs differ. The former is about war and violence that takes place in this world while the latter is about romance.

Upon searching Youtube, I found that there is another version of video produced for Always Online.

My Girl Friend's Wedding

No, no, don't be mistaken by the title. I am referring to my colleague's wedding but to me, she's more than a colleague.

I was tidying my things (as tomorrow is Chinese New Year!) when I came across her wedding souvenir and her invitation card. They are now safely kept in a box =D Gosh, time flies. It's the same month 2 years ago that I attended her wedding and now, she's already a mother of a cute baby girl.

This is by far the quaintest and most special wedding souvenir I have ever seen. Maybe I am shallow =p

Yeah, I like to keep stuffs. I hope I don't end up as a miserable old lady who lives with rubbish 40 years later! LOL

Happy Chinese New Year 2009!

Happy Chinese New Year folks! May you be blessed with good health, wealth, career, relationship and of course, may all your wishes come true! Let's await what the year of "Niu" (Cow) has in store for us ;)

Enjoy this holiday and get more Ang Pows! Eat more and remember to relax!

P/S: I was looking for graphics for this post and suddenly I found a greeting card received last year. Voila! I took a picture of the card with my camera phone and made that my "graphic". LOL.

Size Does Matter

Here comes the Giant,

Wrinkled and dressed in white,

Round and plump,

That's because.........

It's stuffed with chicken, egg, minced pork, and preserved vegetables. I easily passed that as "Tai Bao" (Big Bun - a bigger version of char siew pau) but my mom said people dubbed this Giant as "Yip Zhi Mei" Big Bun. Well, the ingredients used as the patty are not any different from that used to make "Tai Bao".

Just wanted to blog about Giant for fun =p Anyway, this is a rather outdated post as I ate Giant a couple of weeks ago. Pardon me for the poor quality of photos as I was hurrying to sink my teeth into the bun ;)

Hakka Cuisine at Ying Ker Lou, Sunway Pyramid

Being a Cantonese, I am always curious of other Chinese cuisines. I didn't let the opportunity to try them pass me by last Sunday. As I reached Ying Ker Lou, I stopped and suggested to give it a try.

Hakka cuisine signature dishes are "Lui Cha", Yam Abacus, Hakka Noodle and Meatball with salted fish. We ordered the first three dishes mentioned above but not the latter as we are not a huge fan of pork.

Yam Abacus.

Yam Abacus (a.k.a Shun Pun Zi) is a must-try dish in Hakka cuisine. Although oily, I shall generously give away points to this dish if I were asked to grade it. The dough (a.k.a "abacus", which is a mixture of yam and flour, was well-balanced. Otherwise, it would taste floury and would spoil the dish all together. Apart from the "abacus", the chef added beancurds, mushrooms, finely chopped black fungus, dried octupus, spring onions, and minced meats, which introduced more flavours to the dish.

Hakka Noodle

I like the texture of the noodle. It's springy and the strands were not sticked to one another like some other Hakka noodles I had tasted. However, I find this dish salty (it would be better if it's not as salty) and it's oily. The meat cake (pork) was surprisingly good. Again, it's on the salty side. Perhaps Hakka people like their food salty? *shrug*

"Lui Cha"

"Lui Cha" rice

"Lui Cha" is served with rice that are mixed with various types of greens - namely french beans, salted vegetable, peanuts, and dried prawns. What makes this dish special is the soup. I could not really make out what it's made of but I am absolutely sure that it contained grounded greens that have strong aroma. This dish should be eaten by mixing all of the above into one bowl. I personally prefer to add soup to the rice one scoop at a time so that the rice would not be too soggy.

Ying Ker Lou is located in Sunway Pyramid and it's quite secluded. I cannot remember which level but you should be able to find it from the directory. It's located at the same level of J.Co donut.The food is actually rather pricey but I expected that as the restaurant is quite well furnished and decorated.

Anyway, no harm to treat yourself to something a little more luxurious once in a while, yeah? ;)

Early "Lou Sang" with colleagues

It's almost the end of the week and yet I can remember vividly the dinner I had with my colleagues last Friday. We gathered to celebrate my former manager's birthday and to "lou sang". How thoughtful of my dear colleagues.

I enjoyed myself very much. We had a hearty laugh for starters. With Ming around, we will never lack of jokes. It was a perfect timing. I needed a good laugh and I definitely had a blast that night. All of us had a tired jaw by the end of the night.

Thank you for making my day! Miss you all so much.

A Day At Bukit Tinggi

I know it has been ages since my last post. My bad. I had been busy with the project I had worked for months. It was successfully rolled out two weeks ago. Hurray! However, there are follow ups to do - post implementation support and more trainings. I seriously missed this little space where I use to develop my creativity.

Here is an outdated post about my one day trip up to Bukit Tinggi. Although it was after Christmas (went there on the 29th December), there were still many X'mas decorations. Perfect for photo-shooting.

Bukit Tinggi is not exactly a very interesting place. It's not as cooling as I expected and besides a couple of limited selections of restaurants, there are not many things to explore. The souvenir shops are quaint but the souvenirs sold are slightly pricey (for locals perhaps).

I am disappointed and ashamed with the condition of our public washrooms. They smelt bad and looked dirty. It's time for us to put in effort to keep our public washrooms clean. After all, we are adults and we should be capable of using the washrooms in the right manner.

Apart from washrooms, I am not pleased with the service extended by the restaurants. We had to wait for about 30 minutes to get the table cleared and another 10 minutes to place our orders.

Anyway, the photos turned out to be the greatest return from this trip. Not bad, huh?

X'mas Greeting from lovely Nay

It was a surprise to receive a yellow envelope from my colleague while at work. I used to receive a lot of parcels and documents that were work related but that was a while ago. Curious, I quickly scanned through who was the sender. It's from Bangkok and it's from Nay!

Thrilled, I opened the envelope to find another red envelope within. There are 2 pieces of stamp on it. One of them was printed with Nay's pretty face! That's cool and it's by far the most special stamp I ever had in my collection. Thank you!!

The X'mas card is so cute and sweet. It did put a huge smile on my face after going through a long and tiring day. I was indeed very touched. I am blessed to have a friend like you, Nay.

First Movie of The Year 2009 - Ip Man

Happy New Year 2009! It's the first day of 2009 but I feel I am living in yesteryear. This always happens to me. *shrug* Anyway, hope 2009 is a better year for everyone.

What's my celebration to welcome the year of 2009? I went out with my colleagues after work yesterday (worked for half day only) and had pizza for lunch. We actually talked for about 5 hours, including eating time! It was great as we had an enjoyable time talking and laughing our hearts out. We were pratically talking about everything under the sun. It was also my first time after God knows how may years that I had Mc Donald's Sundae cone! No joke. LOL.

Today, I went to catch a movie which I had longed to see since last year - Ip Man. To my shame, I called it I-P Man but it's actually "Yip Man" =p Well, blame it all on my technical background (easy way out huh? hehehe).

Starred by Donnie Yen, this kung fu flick is definitely a good movie to start off the year 2009. Ip Man discusses the spirit of Wing Chun martial art, humanity, morality and friendship. Apart from sleekly choreographed kicks and punches, the script writer and director introduced humour into the movie, which added more flavour to the one-hour-forty-minutes long movie.

There are some scenes, which typically exaggerate the fact that one man could defeat a crowd of more than ten men at one time. I am not doubting the strength of Wing Chun but it doesn't seem too logical why would a group of ten (or more) attacks a single person one at a time instead of all ten (or more) attacking at once. Anyway, it's common to find the above mentioned in almost every action movies.

Donnie Yen protrayal of a humble, well-mannered, righteous and a truly gentleman has me admiring him even more (I have always liked his movies). Umm,..yeah. I am getting the character and the actor mixed up all together but who cares?! hehehe. People like him is scarcely found in the universe these days. Plus, who would not fall head over heels for him if you see him in action.

Credit should also be given to Wilson Yip (director) for his splendid job in capturing the war scenes. They are very realistic and it's indeed very heart-breaking to see how war destroys a country and its people.

All in all, I enjoyed the movie very much and if you are a fan of martial arts, don't miss this ;)