We are at "Bakers' Cottage" for a day.

Yesterday was the 'Bakers' Day' for an advance Birthday. 3 of us went to yokee's house to bake a birthday cake for our friend, without knowing exactly when is her birthday, and also, without knowing whether she'll be at home or out of Pg.
We started at about 9 am in the morning. All ingredients to make the cake is set. It would be a butter cake, laced with whip cream and topped with peaches.
It was my first baking experience coz i don't have an oven at home. This friend of mine really is the all time baker. She has not only the usual items used for baking but the cake deco items as well and 'spare-parts' that can be dug from the big ice compartment. It's just like a bakery coz there are ample ingredients for us to bake cakes anytime we wished to.
First we weighted and measured all the ingredients that we are using: butter, flour, baking soda, baking powder, corn oil, sugar and eggs.
Pre-heating the oven at 180 Celsius, making the cake lining, the cake was baked within 30 minutes. It was fast. We set aside the cake to cool b4 decorating it.

Meanwhile, we planned to do chocolate moist cake. This cake technique is trickier in the sense that it is not baked, but steamed. Yes, we did not use the oven to bake it, we use the big pot in the wok to steam it. Making the choc sauce was the trickiest coz we kept tasting and adding the ingredients to make it sweet. We adhered to the recipe just like we did for the butter cake and the choc moist cake. For the chocolate sauce it tasted bitter and waterry no matter how much sugar, flour and condensed milk we added. So, since it was 1 something already, we took a lunch break. We went to Bayan Baru to have lunch and also to find a box for our birthday cake. Also, to see if we have any idea to make the choc sauce 'sweeter & thicker'. We went to the bakery in Sunshine Square to buy a box but they refused to sell it. So we went to the market but the shop is closed. In the end, we purchased that cake box from the bakery near the row of banks for rm2. That box was very important for us to put that bday cake in. We went back to yokee's house to continue to amend the taste of the sauce and cake decorating!
Several attempts of stirring the sauce mixture and dunno wat else to add in, we tasted the choc moist cake first. It was moist and sweet enough. Simpy delicious from the steam wok so... no need to add so much sugar for the sauce! 2 things mix together is the best compliment! Ironically the gas stove that is not working properly produced the nicest choco moist cake compared to the other stove which is working fine. lol (We initially wanted to give the round shape choco moist to another fren but since it turned out otherwise, we use the square cake which sits on the unpredictable functional but uneven heat supply stove). ;P

In the midst of doing the sauce and hunting for the box, we smsed the bday gal to see if she's around at home. She's not at home, apparently doing her FYP at usm so she's in her hostel. So things are easier for us to find her, since she's nearby but she'll have to refrigerate the cake coz whipped cream melts or turns soft easily.
We went to meet her after completing our cakes. And only then we discovered her birthday is on 17 dec. muahaha... we played guessing game coz we make the cake assuming her bday is in dec..roughly emm 7 dec. Anyway, even the more surprised she was. She said the cake must be bought, not made coz it looked so perfect! haha.. coz the box that we bought is from the bakery, and the cream spreaded was 'quite' even with the neatly arranged peaches on top.

To make things funnier, when the bday gal said "No, this must be from warung kek..u said u bake the cake.(on the box printed warung kek ...)". But my fren accidentally heard it as "No, this must be a round cake. u said we 'bayh' (meaning 'buy' in Hokkien)".. to which she replied, "Of course it's a round cake, it's obviously round!! Of course we bake the cake, we didn't 'bayh'".

'advanced' bday gal replied, "Just now i said warung cake u said round cake. Now i believe 3 of u baked it, u now insist i still said u bought it" -_-"" "U got hearing problem ah?". wakaka

Bakers' Day was fun, the 3 of us had a wonderful time. Advanced bday gal was touched and another friend got the choco moist cake delivered at her doorstep and another friend at the workplace.
At the end of the day it was:
3 cakes baked. (one bday cake for bday gal doing FYP, the round not so smooth cake for 3 of us, the square one- divided to 2 for 2 friends).
6 people shared the joy from 3 homemade cakes! yay!
The choco moist cake was the best choco cake!. Coz it's not the too sweet type, or bitter or too 'jelak' feeling that's sold outside. Just nice..yummy!

p/s: no pics coz everyone forgot to bring digicam. Moreover, our hp are those oldies where cameras are non-existent.

After Celebrations

Yesterday, my family including my grandma, aunty, cousins and nephew celebrated my 22nd Birthday. It was the most wonderful family birthday celebration among other years because it was planned weeks before 14 oct, the actual date.
My cousins said they missed my 21st birthday celebration last year, so this year they planned it out just for me. We had seafood at Batu Maung. With 'birthday' mee, crabs (hard and soft shelled) (mom's fav), fish (my fav), squids, frog (dad's fav), asparagus (grandma's fav) it was very filling.. what a variety of seafood. After the hearty meal, my cousins (3 of them), presented the birthday cake, black forest with strawberries (yummy!) on the fluffy white cream. It was made on the spot in the cake house with my cousin watching the baker did it for 30 minutes, coz she wanted it as fresh as possible. Other customers in the shop sang birthday song for me and we distributed the cake for them as well, including the coffee shop's owner.
My cousins also gave me a teddy bear from ty named raindrops. No wonder it's blue in colour! hehe.. I love the blue fur very much, so soft to touch and above it all, the bear looks cool in blue with the polka-dot ribbon. Oh, thank you so much!
With all the delicous food, cake, presents and angpows, I felt like the most VIP birthday gal being celebrated!
Not to forget also the birthday party my friends celebrated for me on the 11th Oct. I had a very satisfying western dish and my friends took the initiative to have 3 in 1 birthday celebrations for the october buddies, which is me and 2 other friends. I had a very nice watch from my friends, and had the steel strap adjusted yesterday so that I can wear it already! =P
Besides that, thank you friends and roommates besides organizing parties, send warm wishes via smses and e-mails. My sincerest thanks and appreciation to all of you... ^-^

Happy Day

The study week has begun. I am relieved that all my tests are over. For me, this sem has recorded the highest number of tests among all the previous sems. Phew... now only need to focus on the finals which will begin on 29 oct. Timetable is more packed this sem, as my papers will end on 9 nov. Which means I will have holiday earlier than my friends who will have their last papers later than that.
Today is my 'chinese birthday', which is first day of eating vegetarian in the month of the 9 emperor gods. Later my gang of friends will belanja me...haha.
Last night I watched the live telecast of our very first astronaut being lauched to space.
I synchronised my time to 21:22 when it was launched. ;-)
On astro channel 558, they had some interviews with our astronauts and also an ex-cosmonaut, besides that historical moment of the rocket blasting off to space.
According to the ex-cosmonaut, an astronaut will witness 16 sunrises and sunsets in one earth day. Which means, a Muslim practising fasting will have 45 minutes of fasting and breaking fast in between. Whoa, must keep tab of that 45 min intervals.
Upon getting itself into orbit it, the space shuttle will travel at 8 km/s that is why the view from up there will be spectacular. U can see everything passing by so fast, live telecast. Not a boring view, eh.. But our dear astronaut will be doing some checkings and experiments up there so no standing by the window for too long to watch the world goes by...haha. But time is travelling fast there, so every 16 sunrises is a new 'day' so it should be cool..
Ok, i gotta go now... my roommate is waiting for me. She's going back to her hometown for this study week. =D

07.07.07

It's been a month since I have updated my blog!
Oh my goodness, it's not that I have forgotten this blog, just that I've been busy with work.

My industrial training came to an end yesterday, 6 july 07 and yesterday was the day I went to register for my course for this semester.
I had a presentation on my last day of internship. The meeting was called a technical forum. So it was one-hour-Q&A forum for the whole department to share.
Since there are only two presenters, me and another coursemate; I estimated both of us will have a half-an hour presentation each. Prior to that I had to prepare more stuff to present besides the assignment they let me did coz or else my presentation will only last 10-15 minutes if I don't add in extra stuff.

I include whatever things I have learnt since the first week, coz during the first week I was given a stack of notes to study. Some semicon notes and physics related stuff. The presentation went on smoothly, just that I was stuck in one of the slides. I can't explain the coplanarity problems an electronic device properly. Till now, I still have difficulty explaining that. It was kinda embarrassing in that particular section. Surprisingly, nobody interrupted and say, "I don't understand what you are trying to explain. I guess what you wanted to say about coplanarity is bla bla bla...". So I was there with lots of pauses and urm ah...em...em.. and moved on with the next slide. But luckily it was not the main thing on my agenda. small matter. So I went on till the end.

Came to one part, instead of being asked, I threw a question to my supervisor. I remembered I was given to do the assignment and I worked for 2 weeks, got the results until he gave another version of that same thing. I had to find all the differences between first and second version till I was so 'fuming' inside because actually he already had that latest version and did not gave me till 2 weeks later. The earlier version of course, it's not important anymore as it is considered outdated. So instead of showing my disagreement openly, I asked "*****, didn't in the meeting last time you said you'll check the discrepancy of the data because the old version and new version have differences by the way they are measured?"
He went on answering "Ya. bla bla" so fast I didn't catch what he said coz he used many terms that I'm not familiar. Gee, this supervisor ah........*cekik*cekik*

But matter is resolved as I have done my part with that latest version so end of story. I just wanted to highlight to him that next time give interns a latest thing to work on, don't let them suffer first or do double work. =p

Oh ya, we had a great time yesterday. After that presentation we had a farewell lunch at Paddington House of Pancakes @ QB. I realised that eating delicious and special pancakes can cost 20 times nore than the normal pancakes I buy from foodstall. Ha ha. But PHOP do have unique flavours and a variety of pancakes that will tempt you to try it out. Afterall, the farewell lunch is paid by the company so even more worth it. =D

After lunch, head back to factory, get some things done and I went back to USM and register. Next, went to hostel, register. Met up with roommate. Went home and attended wedding dinner of my uncle's secretary. She's very close to us too and knows our family very well. Kinda like old friends. I knew her 9 years ago. She helped me print my assignment coz I don't have a printer yet at that time. So sweet. =)
After dinner went to TESCO till 1 am to shop for groceries. Wah, so tired after I came back.
What a day. My training was a good experience. I shall keep this in mind and till then, it's back to studies on monday!

Project Handover

Today I received a project.....a to be continued project from the past trainees who had done it halfway. So my target is to improvise the whole thing, get more datas and do some simulations. Before all this is done, first step is to read and make research of what this whole thing is about. Next, understand it properly and ask whatever questions that is in my mind.

I am still at step no. 1 - to read the whole thing. They had done their part in documenting them and it's my duty to read and laarn from what they had written. The notes given for the past week serve as the fundemental things I need to know about the processes that is involved in my dept. So this week the materials are going more in depth....I hope i won't sink into deepness and have difficulty floating! =p

Expensive Meal n Lesson

My whole family and I had dinner at the MG restaurant, courtesy of my uncle. With grandma, cousins and my aunts, we ate..makan-makan and by the 4th dish, everyone was almost full.
Partly due to the 2nd dish…a pot (a huge one indeed!) of ‘nutritious’ soup. Everyone except my uncle was unaware what it was when it is served into small bowls, assuming it’s just a soup similar to shark’s fin.

Many things in the big pot…ginseng, sea cucumber, chicken, some Chinese herbs etc. However, in some of our bowls (aunt, uncle, grandma and mine) and the remaining in that big pot contained pieces of this black gluey thing. I had a piece in my bowl …

After eating all the familiar stuff in the bowl and drinking the soup, I started to inspect this black thing.
I thought it is the black chicken, common in soups like these too. Though the skin is black, it looks rubbery and transparent, even the meat is peculiar…not like chicken’s meat . It’s redish brown and the meat is not evenly distributed (not in a whole piece, it’s bits here and there and some soft protruding white bones). Not black chicken then what is it?

Across the table my uncle finally spoke “Ou lang gia tiuk pi boh?” (Has anyone taken *** ?
At first I don’t realize what this ‘pi’ thing in Hokkien…but when my aunt says “Ciakliao mia eh can terng sia ka ha leh pi…” (After you have eaten this, your life will be as long as this ***)

Yikes! Oh! ***is actually turtle’s meat!! Or tortoise meat!! Either one, whateva, in the soup!
According to The Star paper today, these wildlife are smuggled into our country and transported to China. A freshwater turtle can cost between RM 100 to RM 200 per kilo! Chinese claims it has medicinal properties and it is a prized delicacy.
Goodness la…Good or no good…I tak termakan …I put that black gluey thing aside and immediately felt full. My grandma said she saw a seller in the market overturning a tortoise so that it will not ‘run’ or crawl away. Grandma did not finish hers. But uncle seems to love it! Afterall, this whole course dinner was selected by him and costed only a few hundred short of RM 1k!!
So no matter what, must not waste…6 courses to go after this main attraction dish.

Uncle: Eileen, so much soup left in this big pot, come I give you some…
Eileen : No thank you uncle. I full already…(waves frantically and gesturing that the soup is up to throat level!) =p

After that dish was taken away, the other dishes were filling, luckily not so exotic: roasted pork, fish, vege, chicken, mee and dessert.
It was a very expensive meal, it cost a bomb and the lesson also expensive! I shall never put turtle/tortoise/snake/pangolins into my mouth…