Monday, June 30, 2014

Welcome home dinner gathering

Appetizer of japanese cucumber with bamboo pith in a sesame soy sauce.

the V's hosted a "welcome home" to motherland for all their friends. So a few of us came back from playing golf at Los Angeles, samba-ing in Brazil, another was flying round the world with the best airlines on A380 suite class coz he works with an airline, while Monkey & JS just landed in Malaysia less than 24 hours ago from Japan.

V was very apologetic about this lil gathering bcoz he said he doesn't really know where to take us out for dinner. But all of us were rather happy to have chinese food!!!! afterall it's at Noble House :)))

While waiting for the other guests to arrive, we were chomping on small bites. This was extremely delicious - Octopus Fish Cake with spicy Thai dipping sauce.

We used to patron this place at least once a week when we were staying a few steps away. Now that we have moved outta KL, Noble House seems so faraway.

Once everyone was seated, dinner was served swiftly with an extremely hot claypot of sharkfin soup. Now we only believed in sustainable sharkfins - Australia has started this, where the fishes/sharks are caught like any normal fish, and each part of the fish is consumed instead of wasted.

However Starwoods chains of hotels and resorts, together with Hilton and Peninsula worldwide have stopped serving sharkfins.

stir fry edamame beans with tiny crispy shrimps and anchovies. Pardon me for the quality of all the pics....either I was too tipsy or too shaky due to hungers to snap proper pics.

oh piggie!!!! come to momma!!!!
I must say Noble House makes one of the best suckling pig. I guess it oso depends on who ordered it bcoz there's different chefs/si fu grilling it. Very taxing and it's done manually, over slow charcoal fire to delivers an even crispy skins all over its body


Usually serve with soft warm man tou bun and sweet sauce

the perfectly grilled piglet must not have too much of fat/oil underneath its skin so choosing the right piglet is important from their regular suppliers. I could have wallop the entire piglet myself :P
Next was a steamed fish, forgotten wat type of fish this is. This was confirmed steamed, coz many chinese restaurants these days "boil" their fish esp during banquet. Well do u think they have THAT MANY steamers to be able to serve like 50 tables of steamed fish concurrently?
        
yumms so delicate soft and sweet. With a subtle sauce to pair with. You don't wanna drown such beautiful fish with a heavy sauce don't ya?

What is this????
believe it or not it was the leftover of the suckling pig, re-fried with salt and pepper flour. This was way better than KFC!!!!! Check out the jaw with teeth :P

  
Hokkien mee!!! this was rather rare esp at Noble House but by request from the host, just for a guest who has been stationed in Singapore way too many years that he needed a good fix of KL style hokkien mee. This noodle was laden with so many "pork corns" aka pork lards. 

then another bowl came out with more crispy pork lards
*CHOKES!!!!!*
it was really good bcoz it was made fresh. Usually the pork lards we have out there isn't quite that fresh, u could smell the oil. This was one so fragrant...~~~~~ slurp 


Homemade Soy and Egg Toufu with green seaweed innit, hence the toufu is slightly green. Served with soft gelatinous Sea Cucumber on top, green spinach on its side. This dish was outstanding that I am gonna order it in the future.


The wines were even more outstanding.....9 bottles for the 9 of us. It was a Monday nite and I don't really know how I drove home alone after that.

Moochi with so much of crushed toasted peanuts. I'm not really a fan so I didn't try this :P

but I had so much of fruits...hahahaha...

Thank you to Victor and Viola for hosting such a fabulous dinner, only u guys know wat yummy outta the menu food to order. I don't even know wat are the dishes called, will just show the captain these pics next time for easy references.

For more information:
www.orientalrestaurants.com.my

Friday, June 27, 2014

Abusing myself

These are pics compilation from my friends whom have been embarking on the same journey as Miss Monkey....self-inflicted injuries.....

at every corner of our bodies...
nope we do not have drugs or alcohol problem...errr alcohol maybe but not to such extend that wanna do self-harm. And no, we do not have mental illness!!!


 
I dun even know how did we create such zebra lines injuries into the calves.


this one is pretty normal. I get this all the time


sometimes it's in such weird order like leopard spots. I have no idea how did we do it. So why have we been abusing ourselves????

All in the love for Fit Pole.
Yeah my team mates refused to have their faces featured here so I had to crop them out.

We have started Fit Pole for about 4 months now...actually I would say less bcoz of absenteeism due to travels, work, vacation...tee hee hee...Instructor has been -_-" bcoz we are the worse class ever. Never seems to be able to have a full class coz everyone is away either in New York, Singapore, Hong Kong, Switzerland or Japan.

but we are loving it so much that we are so determined to graduate from our Beginner class *at least*. Hahahaha. what started out as a joke now ended up something so serious, even when we had cruises everywhere on our bodies...wearing a beautiful dress or shorts ain't the same anymore with those ugly patches.

Nevermind....it's worth it :)))
so wish us luck!!!!

Thursday, June 26, 2014

Jesselton

 
Did you know that Kota Kinabalu was formally known as Jesselton during the British days? While the local chinese called it Api-Api as in Fire....why yea?

I lurve to watch the sky from the plane. As the plane was flying low ready to land, Monkey was all ready with iPhone to snap snap snap. And we landed just in time for dinner. 

On the plane we were served hi-tea with warm raisin scones...surprisingly the scones were very good. JS refused to eat coz to him airlines food isn't edible at all, maybe except on a few occasion. I know, he's a snob kekekeke but he alwiz said I am a snob instead of him.


How could u ever get bored with such stunning view....the 3 islands sat neatly next to each other. This trip we didn't have the time to visit the islands like wat we alwiz do but it's good enuff just to be able to see them from ashore :)))

I got so burnt from the Sun that my face and nose were all RED
JS found some Ylang Ylang flowers from Eveline's garden and put it on my hair. It smelled so sweet. Later I was told that ylang ylang was one of the ingredients used to make Chanel No. 5


SunSets have been so beautiful every evening....all I could do was to sit there and be mesmerised by it, sipping my iced cold coconut drinks straight from its shell. The clouds looked so soft u feel like u could poke it with your fingers and make cotton candy out of it!!! and the plane had to draw a line right in the middle of it all.......but this view was perfect enuff for me already.


Watching sunset with JS has alwiz been a bliss. Doesn't matter where we are......even from the balcony of our lil home in Saujana :)))

certain days the sunset would be like this.....I think I prefer it more Red and Purplish, but this is also beautiful :)))

 after a short 3 days 2 nites, we bid farewell to Jesselton....too short a trip....but we had to work...hahaha. The above pic is Pulau Gaya taken from the plane *hence the reflection*

I would like to show you 2 different worlds living in that island...
On your left is the illegal settlements of  hundreds and thousands of "tourists without passports"
while on your right, are the beautiful 5 stars villas resort by YTL.

Bye KK or Api or Jesselton for now!!! will see you again in a few months time :)))
I need to get back to my "working" mode soon.
:D heeeeeeeeee


Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Itsukushima Shrine and her surrounding, Miyajima Island

Early in the morning after our scrumptious breakfast FEAST, both JS & Monkey dashed to Itsukushima Shrine to "catch the worms". As the saying goes, early bird gets the worm....but in this case we just wanna avoid the worms and throngs of tourist visiting this shrine everyday.

We stayed at the island for 3 days and somehow have already managed to gauge the number of tourists according to time, high and low tide etc.

For photography, u just wished u were the only one there. How selfish~~~ but for you readers, JS worked really hard to capture sceneries minus human beings.


The estimate year of the establishment of this shrine was 776 but could be older. The entire shrine complex was built over the Seto Sea. Restoration works are being done throughout the year to ensure safety of the floorboard, planks and the entire structure.


Rows and rows of Sake Casks on display. These casks are empty bcoz if it's full of sake, it would be so so heavy. It's more of a symbol to signifies Humans and Gods.


Once we were at the main pavilion, our eyes transfixed to one and only thing, the red Otorii. It's so beautiful and majestic....with its reflection on the sea. As we walked, all we could do was to twist our head to the right, eyeballs glued to it.


And then we realised we walked to the other side...AIKSSSS watch where u are goin Monkey.

Despite being so early in the morning, the first wave of tourists consisting of school children and chibi marukos were already there.

My fierce housemate :))))))))))
dun ask me why he looked so grumpy. He's definitely wasn't maybe except for the part he needed to shoooooo away tourists to get the best picture. KAKAKAKKAKA yes can u imagine him shooo-ing ppl outta the view?

the Noh stage dated from 1590, reserved for festivals where there will be performances to pay homage to Gods.

Such well manicured tree :))))
At the exit of the shrine, there's a few other places you could visit such as the Tahoto Pagoda, the treasure hall and history museum.


As we were slowly walking around the shrine complex, the sea water has already begun to reside and the next low tide isn't ON until 3.15pm on that day. Once the tide is low, you could walk to the Red Gate.


The 5 storied Pagoda is a must visit as well. You will not miss it because it's so tall!!!

This huge and REALLY Old Pavilion next to the pagoda is Senjokaku Hall. Senjokaku means Pavilion of 1000 tatami mats, so it was built according to that size. U know floor plans for houses/apartments in Japan is still measured in this measurement?

Huge Pavilion...I could imagine this to be my future home...HAHAHAH yes I love to dream and to Dare to Dream :)))

The afternoon sun hits the leaves and reflected back creating an illusion that there's snow on the trees outside...can u imagine how beautiful this place is during Sakura or Autumn Foliage or the cold white winter??? Must be so beautiful....

Senjokaku Hall was built in 1587 and its construction was halted when the Lord Feudal died...and it was never finished. Hence u could see it's so bare.....and there's nowhere to sit...except on the wooden floor.

Just right next to it is the famous 5 storied pagoda....wat a beautiful place :)))))))

The other end faces the sea and from the right angle you could see the red torii again. I guess too many postings on the red torii and let's take a break from that for now hehehehe.

I can never get tired of Japan, so it's time to plan for the next one at the next place in Japan :)))) As much as I enjoyed sharing and posting of what we have experienced, I hope you readers will too. :))