Tom Yam

After sending the kids to school, I usually will go for breakfast around my area. I like soupy thing, like ngau chap, tom yam, asam laksa and others. I guess in Penampang area, most of the people prefer pork noodle soup, beef or buffolo noodle soup. This probably also a religion factor where majority of us are christian. But never the less, we do have a lot of Indian and Malay restaurant apart from the Chinese. When I think about it, we do have a lot of nice eating places, to name a few, Wan Wan restaurant, who serves fish soup, Krishna Curry house, an Indian restaurant who serves very nice fish head curry dish, Mee Sup Pipin, who serves pork soup noodle, Wild Treasure restaurant, who serves crocodile meat and etc.

 

I think I have tasted a wide range of tom yam and I know what i'm talking about when it comes to tom yam. My favourite tom yam place will be some where in Thailand and unforfunately I can afford to go there all the time due to time and money constrain. We'll stick to local destination. ehem, my number 1 choice to have my tom yam is a friend house, she is a Thai lady and she is seriously good when come to this dish. I even craved for it when I was pregnant with my eldest son and she got no problem with doing the cooking for me. She always said " its for the baby", haha! she is a dear friend and thanks for letting me enjoy the moment (you know who you are when you read this :) ). Now she is rather busy and i'm not pregnant anymore so good enough to have that moment with her.

The second choice will be Wan Wan restaurant, its a must to go there atleast once a week. The tasted of the dish is so reach. Their tom yam is the creamy type, which I like most. Their ingredients are very fresh especially their fish and prawns. oohh..love it. I can almost taste it in my mouth right now ;)

My third choice use to be Atong but it seems that this restaurant has lost it taste when my husband and I when just now and my husband was really disappointed with the taste of his tom yam. Mine was same but I try not to focus on the disappointment rather tried to compliment it with some calamancy or kasturi we call it locally and some cili padi. It was tasteless at the beginning but as the flavous mixed together, it become ok.

I don't know about you but how I eat my noodle soup is by having two or three spoons of the soup first before diggin in to the noodles. This way, if the soup is good, I will be happy eating it the whole bawl. Other wise I can't stop trying to find some other things to eat just to ease the wanting the right taste apetite.  

No offense to hotel food but I still prefer the old school way of getting good food. For me, the taste of hotel food is very safe. Meaning you can add a little bit of this and that depending on how creative or deliciuos you want your soup to be to suite you taste bud because they do provide you with all the coriander, spring onion and etc at the side of the counter but who wants to take that hastle of doing all that when you can just order and get the right taste on the dot! At the end of the day we will still be paying with what we eat :)

So what is tom yam? For me, it is a delisious spicy soupy recipe from Thailand, mixed with curry paste, tamarind juice, turmeric, fish source, lime juice, lime leaves, lemon grass, coconut milk, brown sugar, cooking oil and alst but not least sliced fish or other sea food.

Some recipe book you can buy online with reasonable price, have fun and good luck!

Indian recipe

Chinese recipe

Athlete recipe

What do you do when you can't sleep

We all have those days where we just couldn't get ourselves to sleep. This is my case at the moment. Usually I would stay on bed and read a book or just lay down and try to fall asleep but today is just out of the odinary, I'm writing on my blog :). 

There are so many reasons why people can't sleep. For example, having a test tomorrow, waiting for a reply from college, had a fight with wife or husband or friend and so much more. In my case now is that i slept early and i'm awake now at 5am. I put my children to sleep all the time and most of the time I will fall asleep with them at the same time :). Hey! running around for 3 is not an easy job you know. but there is always something good behind it like yeah, your tired but I loose most of my weight just by doing this and well ofcourse selective food intake.  

By the time I go to my own bed, I can't get myself to sleep any more. So I do some homework on yahoo answers on the net and found out that 5822 results or posting just on this topic. wow! most of the posting are actually having dilema. Out of 10, 4 will some how relate to some dilema. The strage part and actually it made me smile when some of them write a song lyrics or what is their plan for tomorrow.

Well i guess this is it for now, I took 35 minutes to write this topic :). Its time to get my kids stuff ready to school. Getting sleepy later on is another chapter ..haha!

How internet affect your day?

Its been more then a decade that I have known internet. My first encounter with this technology is at the internet cafe down in Donggongon town. A town where I grew up with. If I'm not mistaken, the place called cybercafe and the rate that they charges their customer is RM4.00 pe hour and when you want to connect to the internet, you got to click the dial button to connect and before you can connect to the web, you will be hearing a funny sound for few seconds. At the rate of rm4/ hour, we are still willing to pay that much just to learn and to familiarise the www. com thingy. Yahoo has been loyal to www world and guess what? i've been using my first email address till today.

Just like human, the technology evolve all the time and today, we even have this broadband and wireless service to get connected to the internet. Now we have so many choices to access the internet. I guess most of us still using land line or we called it Streamyx because it is faster or it is some how better than broadband service. But hey! who cares how you access the net, as long as you get it there right! :). But I can assure you that most of us will prefer a faster connection all the time, even if our pc is 7 years old and still the original condition..haha..

Now with or without being aware of it, we actually can't live without accessing the internet. Lates gadgets such as Ipad and Iphone you can use to access the net easily 24 7, Anything to do with writing now been taken over by computer because of it sophisticated fuctions and what amazing things that it can do. Imagine those days if you want to send a letter, the process goes like writing it (15 min), going to the post office (30 min) and God knows when it is actually reach the address of the receiver. Now, Sharing files, email, broacasting live on line, listening ot music, watching movie and so much more is just a few clicks away. No more sweaty armpits to the post office. :)

With everything going so fast now, every body is trying to cope up with every body being fast and at the end of the day we feel so tired that we didn't actually notice how the day passed by so fast because there is still email that we haven't got the chance to reply and so on and we are basically repeating this activities all the time in front of the computer just to get things done. Those who are working most of the time infront of the computer will fine it awkward when out of a suddent their pc is not working or their boss ask them to go for a leave. 99%  of them will definitely still go online to do something. Unless they are put to a place where internet is not possible.

Apart from all the good things that we benefits from internet, there are some negative things when we depends on it too much. We seldom hear things like credit card being violated and a lot more scams that has been going around. Other than that, the exposure of negativity towards our children on the internet are just a matter of fine line.  

Well now I said my day will definitely in some ways will have to intereact with the internet. Every time when I need to check on something, internet is the first place that I will go. Thanks to those brains which invented this technology and all Ican say is that theres always some bad fruits among the good ones.

                                                                    

Food Channel

My husband and I have one thing  in common when it comes to tv channel, we enjoyed watching TLC. Most of the time we will be watching food related series such as Jamie Oliver, Andrew Zimmern, Anthony Bourdain and others. My back ground with food is totally local. I'm not those type who really curious with what I eat but my husband is the total opposite of me. Coming from a family brackground of baba nyonya, english, chinese and kadazan (total rojak!) and grew up in Kuala Lumpur, he experienced so much of the west and the east of Malaysian cuisine.

Having the opportunity to be at the northen part of west Malaysia is a wonderful experience. The people, the social enviroment and most of all with the foooood... I was then in my university (University Utara Malaysia) years and staying in the campus. What do you expect if the location of the university is so far away from the hustle and bustle of town and it is actually at the border of Malaysia and Thailand to be exact. So you have no choice but to enjoy campus food. I never fancy hot and spicy food and  was having bad, I mean seriously bad moment with food there for nearly a month untill I managed to adjust myself with it. Fast forward, I actually miss the fusion of Malay and Thai cuisine back then. Its been a decade after I graduated and back in Kota Kinabalu, I sometimes pop by Nok Thai restaurant in Damai where they serve delicious Thai food and their desserts are fabulous just to eased my craving for Thai food and for Malay food, Kak Nong is my choice.

Now, I am in to cooking, not only for the sack of pleasing my appetite but also to make my whole family feel happy with food. People always said the heart of a home is in the kitchen. Thanks to TLC, I learned more than just local cusine and can get most of the recipes on their website. For me, cooking is like solving an algebra where you can either be using +, -, x or / in order to solve the question and at the end of it you will get a negative or positive answer. With cooking, you can use so many ingredients in so many ways of cooking and will get a nice or nasty out come at the end of it.

Since I have my bunddle of joy, I have been trying most of the kids recipe which I found on the internet. As a mother, I believe cooking good food for my kids is very important. I will always make sure that they will have variety of food all the time. My kids usually eat rice with soup. I always rotate between chicken, beef or fish soup and I used a lot of vegetables to compliment the taste. I do give them fried food sometimes and their favourite is fried ikan bilis (anchovy) and oh, fruits is a must with them. To Share some tricks on how to make your child to eat vegetable is I guess by training them or make them familiar with this kind of food at the early age (6 or 7 months old) is critical because if they are not familiar with it, the chances of them eating it is less. What I did with my kids is that I usually boil some vegetable such as carrot, broccoli or other local vege for them as snack. They didn't really care what was that back then. They will just put inside their mouth what ever you give them. I will also blend some of it in to their porridge and thanks God until now they don't have problem eating green. Other trick is for kids at age of  4 years and above. I've seen some friends do this to their kids. They cut the vege finely and mix it with minced meat or even in soup. Its seems woking for them but hey! no harm trying right.

Will share some more write up about food soon but for now I got to go back to my food channel :)

             

Local Music

I like music, I don't seems to know any one in my life doesn't like music. In my family, most of us actually either can sing or play any music instruments. Hmm..wonder why none of us actually really make music as a career.

I can see that the local music industry had changed a lot since those days when you can really count just how many local song was produced by listening to RTM Sabah (now as Sabah vfm)  every morning and evening. Why I said morning and evening is because back in the 80's and 90's, this is the only time when my late grandpa will tune in to the Kadazan section on radio. The main purpose was I guess to hear the tuahi (death anouncement on radia). So out of that two hours session, I remembered very well that the radio station can play a song repeatedly once in the morning and once in the evening. To name some of the old time favourites by the artis like Aloysius Mojilis, Justin Stimol, the late John Gaisah and others.

I don't really tune in to the channel where my grandpa used to listen those days but any Sabahan will definitely know Suria FM 105.9 and as the technology continue to enhanced itself, we can also tune in to KK FM, Hitz FM and others no matter where we are, at home or in our car. Being in the area of having an internet access enable us to tune in to any radio channel around the globe. Other than radio channel, Music production company such as Kadus Entertainment, Ampal production and others does play big role to get our talented people to polish their skill in the industry. Last but mot least, Websites such as Youtube, Itune and others does make the local music industry grow faster.

Coming back to the local music, I have to admit it that I don't fancy local music when I was younger, I prefer listening to music from America, Europe or as long as it is in english. This is probably because the family has been listening to this kind of music and I just go with the flow or I was having inferiority complex.hhmm.. But now as I began to listen to some of the local radio channel, I do actually like some of the songs. Songs like Tanak Kampung by Jimmy Palikat, Sayang Kinabalu by the late Kimin Mudin some others.

This present moment, english song by our local artist is no longer surprising. My kids and me favourite at the moment is a song called Butterfly Baby by Angelina Perete and her daughter Estee. This song is full of soul, something what we always called evergreen. I am not surpise in ten or twenty years time we will still be hearing this song being played in some happy occasions. Having to know Angelina personally is a blessing. She is just like her song, fun and full of love.

With my family, when ever we are having a gathering, kareoke session is a must. we will be singing english to Dusun song and sometimes even filipino or chinese songs :). The element of music actually make the whole environment more happening. 

Family Weeked Activity

Every Satuday and Sunday my world revolved around the family. Visiting the family house in Kg. Pogunon is a must in the weekend itenery. The trio are looking forward to play with their cousins over the weekend. Well, what else happy kids like them should be doing right?! Speaking about playing, going back to my memoryland of being a little girl and grew up in a kampung was seriously fun. Haha..i can still smile to the things that we did those days as a budak kampung.

Grew up in a family of seven in a typical kampung atmospher is usually what the new generation is missing right now. I still remember freshly the things that we usually do after school. To name a few, taking a deep in the Moyog river, going to the kabun (field) with our grand parent, mokilo'o bundu (waiting for the bundu fruit to fall) and the list goes on and on..but the champion of all the memories is when I was just about nine or ten years old and we just got to understand how the Kadazan or Dusun funeral was being conducted traditionally. If I'm not wrong, this incident hapened after my late great grand mother's (Yapa's mother) funeral. We (my borther, sisters, cousin and I) tried practicing the culture by burying a dead chick and we got a big scolding from our late granpa (Yapa) and being chased by him with a rotan. We were literally crying and do all those stuff they did at the funeral for the chick. We did the mongodunsai (gong beating for the dead), mogiad (crying session for the dead), making the cross and ect. haha..As a kids I can say we are very well trained physically in a kampung and we managed to get away with the rotan by climbing up the rambutan trees. One of the tree is still loyaly producing fruits for us up till today but its shorter now as my father had trimed it because it grew so tall that it caused some damages to the roof of our humble kampung house those days. Back to the strory, as yapa was going towards us and shouting we are causing a big trouble when we played the sound of gong for the death with empty tins and emty diesel drum, with split seconds some of us already at the top of the trees and I think one of us run to the river. It was hilarious when we knew that Yapa couln't clim the tree and all of us where laughing instead of terified.."Angalangas kou no ki, tinggorudon kou ngawi" ka di yapa! ( Yapa said to us,"you guys are very naughty, the lightning will stike you guys"!). This is how the elderly usually will get angry with us and how as a child at that time handle it oohh..priceless! Most of the time this story will always comes out if we have big family gathering.

Now, most of the time on Sunday after Sunday school, all the kids will come to the family house and I will be cooking lunch for them. Most popular and still in demand recipe is fried egg with rice and kicap (soy sos). I have to admit it that I do still eat this recipe some times.haha.. Clap!clap! to my cousin Lester who had been entertaining the small ones with his skill of pushing the wilbarrow around the compound. They love it!

For me I will try my very best to let my kids enjoy what is left as what we call a kampung lifestyle. Being able to run around in the house compound freely, eat what  ever you can find around your compound such as lapak, korobintoi, biabas (guava) and a lot more and most of all feeling free from being a control freak towards my kids.

Bloging the Blog

This is my first serious blog and looking forward to share with the world in things I learned everyday. So i'm  from a place called Penampang in a state of Sabah, Malaysia. If you don't know where is Malaysia, you can probably google the name Borneo.

I basically grew up in a small village or in local language we call it as kampung. Primary and high school was fun and university life was crazy but all and all I managed to get it all done with good grades. ;)

I am a wife and a mum of 3 wonderful children, oohh i love being a mum and you can't imagine the suprises that the 3 gives me all the time. For now, my life has been 110% all about them. oh! and their name are Michael, 5 and a half (he is dreaming of being 6 everyday :) ) he was born in the month of December. The second one is Andrew, 4 and Zoe, my girl, she is 2.

So now that I don't go out that much and partying is wayyy out of my schedule, hey! thanks to Facebook and who ever invented this internet thingy for keeping me connected with friends even i'm at home or else i'll be a katak di bawah tempung. :'(

 I have always wanted a blog which I can share my thoughts and hopefully can learn something from bloging. Things that I prefer doing now, so to improve myself as a wife and a mum are cooking, teaching my children about life (hopefully I will do good in this subject) and things that benefits my family :). I used to like sport activities so much but I guess for now I need to just stick with 1 sport activy, which is running around for my family :).

Ahh...I guess that its for the intro and will be doing a lot more posting from now on.