2013 Chinese New Year coming

Some goodies before the Chinese New Year.

 First Yu Sheng 鱼生 of the year (2013)

 A nice box of Mandarin Oranges (椪柑)

 Almond Sugee

 

and of cause Pineapple Tarts

 

A Simple Innovation

I sent my car to the agent for service last Friday, the was done accordingly.

During the handling the key over to the customer service, the service guy was doing something at the driver seat area and I did not really bother what is it.

At the end of service, I took over the car and noticeed the following sticker on the side of the seat.

It was a little innovation that Komoco team has.  It indicates the original seat position since during service, the technician is likely to adjust the seat.  Thus I am able to get back the original position after the service.

Actually, what Komoca can do further is the adjust the position back and tear of the sticker.

What pictures are in your phone

With the popularity of Smart Phone that has the capabilities of pictures taking, video, voice recording, downloading of information from the web, eReader, etc;  I believe many of us have lot of pictures taken by your smart phone.  Pictures such as what food we eat, outing with friends, work related, news articles, happening around you.  Here, I am going to share some of these that are taken from my smart phone.

Food, this is the first as most of us, Singaporean are food crazy.

I love dumpling, particular pan fried.  This is deep fried though.

This plate of Chili prawn was one of the dish during a wedding dinner at Mandarin Hotel.  This was GREAT.

Some dishes we served during the 2012 New Year when our brothers and sisters visited us.

The above Pizza, Bake Rice was from Pizza Hut at Batam.  We had a 2D1N trip to Batam during March 2012.  After our dinner, and during payment, we noticed that the price was very good.  I cannot remember how much is it now but it is definitely great.

The above Satay, Chili Crab and the steam was a dinner at Jumbo Dempsey.  I had been to Dempsey a few times and always find their food are with good quality and reasonable price.

This Char Siew Wanton Noodle is at Commonwealth Drive.  This is the first time I had from this stall.  I find the noodle is Q and with quite a bit of Char Siew.  The owner also provide very good service and a simily face alway.

This Nasi-Lemak is from a coffee place near my place.  The rice tasted slightly different from the normal Nasi Lemak.  I believe it is because the owner uses coconut powder instead of coconut milk.  Chili was nice but not really the chicken wing.

 2011 General Election.  Punggol East SMC.  A 3 corner fight.

 The school that I had my secondary education.  I was fortunate to be the first batch to graduate.  The school was shifted from Bedok South to current location.

 A trip to Batam Island.

 A newspaper article about how to cheaper electronics at Hong Kong.

The carpark wardan who sit there 3 evening each week to give fine for those who park illegally his/her cars.

At my SO company family.  A performer in a human-size ballon.

So, I had cleared my pictures from my phone.  How about you?

value for money - alarm clock

My current alarm clock is bought from China Ikea 5 years ago.  it is has a 4" LCD screen and has a big stop button.  Anyway, it has served me well int he past years and recently, the LCD light become very dim even with a new battery.

So, got myself another new alarm clock.  Again, this time, I visited Ikea (Singapore), and bought a new alarm clock.  It has more than a standard alarm clock.  It has date, time, stop watch function as well as temperature function.

 

 The best part about this alarm clock is the price.  It costs $7.90.

half-way through

Keith completed about half of the Brain classes, the result is not what we are expecting.  He has his SA1 recently and the result is similar to CA1.  There is no improvement academically.  He has become more patient though and hopefully with that, he will be able to focus in his study and improve in his CA2 and SA2.

Singapore Family Education

I had attended 4 SFE programs conducted in my son primary school.  Through these programs, it supposes to help parent to cope better with their children, to educate their children, to understand the children, etc. 

Just this Saturday, attended one on the "How to boost your children self esteem."  Many a time, the information or the examples quoted by the trainer are the actual happening around you.  Let me give an example.  How many of you actually tell your children to study hard and get good result other they would become a road sweeper next time.  I think this is rather negative.  Why not tell them if they study hard and get good result, they could become the boss of the road sweeper.  Nothing wrong with road sweeper but all of us want our children to do much better than that.

Just trying to express my thought.

Have fun and stay happy always.

After 4th Lessons

Keith has completed 4 lessons on the brain training from the center and daily training by us.  He performs better in the training exercise and increasing his beat rate.  On top of this, he also started on the logic training.  He seem to like the logic training more as this is less stressful.  The training so far has not translated to any improvement yet as this is too early.  I believe we should be able to see some accademic improvement after 3months.

1st lesson

My son went through the 1st lesson yesterday.  he was nervous and just following instructions.  He was good at some tasks and a couple of tasks were very difficult for him such as reading Blue, Green, Red, Green as Red, Yellow, Blue and Red.  I tried myself!  Not easy and when you being paced.

Anyway, it is a good start for him.

Brain Development

My kid was doing very badly in his school work since P1.  He is currently in P4.  We know that we need to help him so we had try tuition, both group and one to one tuition but unfortunately we did not see any improvement.  So basically in P3 we tuitioned him during our evening and weekend hours.  Doesn't help too.

Recently, we get to know about this Brain Development Centre that help to develop one's brain from simple basic thing such as reading color chart in paces.  He took the test from the centre and the result indicated the area of his weakness and is closely reflected what we knew about.  So we decided to sign him up for the program.  The program has not started for my kid but I am already excited about it.

Let see his improvement after some training.

Fraser Hill

After Sungai Lembing, we headed to Fraser Hill, passing by Bentong town for lunch and ice-cream.  Sat off in the morning 10am and reached Fraser Hill in the evening about 5pm.  Fraser hill is a nice cooling place for resting.  The temperature was about 22 degree in the day and 18 degree in the night.  Not too much difference between day and night so that is great.  We had great time and had durian again both days at Fraser Hill.  The durian was sold by someone who drove from Raub to Fraser Hill.  Durian was GREAT.  Seriously GREAT.  I will talk about it later.

The trip up the hill had 3 casualties.  They got nausea and vomited due to the narrow and meander road.

A picture with the Bukit Fraser to start off with.

Just before dinner, we saw a durian truck.  The boss selling both D24 and Mao Shang Wang durian.  We bargain for the prices and finally settled for RM22/kg.  We had a total of 5 durians.  The only person who does not like durian in this trip is Klein.  Too bad, he can only watch us taking the delicious durian.  The 2nd nite, it was raining since after 3pm and so the durian truck business not so good.  We were back to the store and bargain to RM15/kg this time round.  This time, we had 7 huge Mao Shang Wang.  This is by far the best durian I had.  Now, when I try durian back home in Singapore, I could not find those good taste.  hai...

Steam boat dinner after the durian.  RM25/pax (not a buffet), this price was ok but the food was just normal.  Simple steam boat ingredient such as prawn, vegetables, egg, chicken, beef.  The cups were not washed thorough as we could taste the oil when we are provided with tea or water.  Service was lousy too.  Requested for rice and was told they do not have rice but after we are done with the dinner, the next table was served with rice for their dishes.  Did not bother to ask them since we are already done but this was not the service we were looking for.

We found a place for a game of pool.  All the pros having their shots at it.

Next morning, we had archery after our breakfast at the Shanzhan hotel.  This was my first time and I did well.  All arrows were on target with 1 out of 12 hitting the bull's eye.

My 3 nephews tried horse riding.  Short loop but these kids had "a dream come true."

In the morning, we headed for a trail trekking.  The walked took us about 30mins both ways.  There some difficult parts where some of us had to use 4x4 mode to complete the trail.  We had another group picture for the job well done.

This is The Smoke House.  A hotel cum dinner place.  We had our lunch here.  Price was a little steep but food was great.  The place has very nice decoration and well organized dining hall.  They actually requested you to stay put at a waiting area (with sofa) before the meals were ready to serve.  I am not too sure why but definitely not because they do not have enough sitting capacity in dinning area.  Could be just a English or French culture.

I am going to end this entry with the most beautiful thing I have.

Trip to Sungai Lembing

The first destination of our Malaysia trip was Sungai Lembing.  It took us quite some time to reach the resort in Sungai Lembing.  We crossed the 2nd link at about 7:45am and had breakfast at 2nd link rest area and had lunch at Segamat, thus we only reached Sungai Lembing at about 3:30pm.  First thing at the resort is a welcome durian by the owner of the resort.  Nothing great about the durian but just durian.  The village feel from the mediacorp Kumpong Ties vs the real feel is so much difference.  Once in the kumpong, I could heard the insect calling, the smell of kumpong, fresh air, birds chirping, greenery, water rushing sound.  Let me use the pictures to tell you the story.

A SAT Map of the Sungai Lembing area.

Another SAT map indicating the various places of the kampong.

Nice Reception.  The durian is ready for us.

Karaoke Area

Clean and Neat room

The next set of pictures are the surrounding at Sungai Lembing.  We really did not visit much as time does not permit us to do so.  Visited a hanging bridge, provision shop, food centre and Panaroma Hill.

This is Tian Shu Gong Provision Shop (天叔公杂货店)

Lady boss, she is very friendly.  杂货店老板娘，很健谈。

The Hanging bridge.  Did not manage to capture a side view, it sure look better.

The Panaroma hill that was within walking distance from our resort.  We woke up early and started climbing the hill (really, it was just a hill of 250m) at about 5:30am.  We read that it will take about an hour to climb so we set of early to catch the 6:30am sunrise.  The climb was tough and it was pitch dark that we need to carry torch light to light up the steps.  We were quite enthusiatic but the tireness and hungry stomach caught up with us.  With just 20% climb, we needed rest.  Actually, we did not know how long is the climb.  We push on, taking rest frequently, I took about 4 rests and the pace was slowing down.  In fact, we reached the peak within 40mins and it was still pitched dark when we reached.

 Sunrise from Panaroma Hill, too bad the cloud had blocked the sun.

Fog above the Lembing town 

After watching sunrise, head back down to the town

Back lane! The fog could still be seen in the morning about 8am.

The wet market and further down is the food centre.  The residents rode their motorbike for marketing.

Nice and tasty Char Siew Wanton Noodle, costs RM3.5 (S$1.4).  It is very inexpensive if I used Singapore dollar standpoint.  If I were to work and stay there, and have this at RM3.5, I find that it is expensive.

Overall, Sungai Lembing (林明) is a nice place particularly for those stay in a city such as I.  I used to stay in Kampong till the age of 7 when I moved into HDB flat.  I would catch small fished in longkang (stream), roamed around the village, bath from well water.  So, I love to get back to kampong once a while to enjoy the kampong feel.  Other thought is to let my son enjoy a little of the kampong life.  I wish I could have stayed there for another nite to explore other part of Sungai Lembing.

What do you think?  Any comments?