Koong Woh Tong

Due to the problem of global warming, the temperature ranges from 23°C to 35°C on an average. Feeling sick of it? Can’t live without air conditioner? Need something cool stuff? Beside herbal drinks and ice-cream, “Guīlínggāo” is one out of choices you can put into your consideration list. 

Why must be “Guīlínggāo”?

“Guilinggao” is thought to be good for the skin, allowing for a healthier complexion upon repeated consumption. Other supposed positive effects of the jelly include improving circulation, assisting muscle growth, relieving itching, reducing acne and kidney restoration.

So, here we go … …

Koong  Woh Tong owned many branches all around in Malaysia, such as IOI Mall located at Puchong, Times Square, Sg. Wang and etc. These are their signature of branches interior design, it's very traditional China herbal tea shop feeling. With the bottles of herbs display and the golden pots contain their herbal tea.

 

“Guīlínggāo”, also known as Tortoise Jelly (though not technically correct) or Turtle Jelly, is a jelly-like Chinese medicine, also sold as a dessert.  Regular “Guilinggao” jelly is black in appearance; however, the actual color is more of a dark brown.

Look at the refrigerator, full of “Guīlínggāo” and they make sure the temperature is good enough to maintain the quality. The yellow container is prepared for customers who wish to take away the “Guīlínggāo”.

 

My comment…

Naturally, it is not sweet, but slightly bitter, although sweeteners such as honey can be added to make it more palatable. For me, I added almost one teapot of honey   ^^V

 

Beside “Guilinggao”, there is one famous herbal tea selling in Koong Woh Tong, it’s named “Wong Lo Kat”, taste bitter. If you are feeling sore throat, fever, flu or cough, you might consider trying out the “Wong Lo Kat” mix with their tradition recipe here. The two little packing of powder is made from “cooling tablet” which is made from several of herbs.

Of course, they are various kind of herbal tea available here. For exampel, Chrysanthemum chrysathemum herbal tea, " Wu Hua Cha" and so on. All of these does help cooling our body and refresh our mind.

“To do the Guilinggao has to be sure to put a heart to do it, if only concern to make profit, you will not make a good “Guilinggao” ever”. Mr. Yan (The CEO of Koong Woh Tong) said these simple phrases, it clearly emphasized the objective and goal of Koong Woh Tong all among these years.

 

Lastsly, let me share about the history of “Guilinggao” … …

According to a legend, the Tongzhi Emperor nearly cured his smallpox by taking guilinggao. However, Empress Cixi believed his disease could be cured by worshipping a smallpox idol. She succeeded in convincing the emperor to quit his guilinggao regimen. The emperor died soon after. There stilll many version available of the story...

by: Liew Heng Wei, Emily @ ifunblock



                                             



Transsexualism (Ah Gua) in Town

Transsexualism is distinct from transvestism (cross-dressing) and does not always indicate a change in the individual’s sexual preference. Generally, there are two types of transsexualism, from a male to female, and vice versa. A male who ‘transform’ himself into “herself” is also known as Ah Gua’s. Ah Gua’ meaning a man acting like a woman. To certain extend, it could mean transvestite. 

Ah Gua

Approaching with Potential Customers

There are several recall that I wish to share with you. First of all, they need respect from all of us. No matter which religion are you coming from, try to use your empathy to listen and observe what they could be doing. Could you imagine in a heavy rainy day, they were still standing outside of the corridor to wait for their customers? It could be weird when you saw their expression which putting their fingers close to their ears because of a thunder shock. It’s their biological factor (hormone) lead them to be expressed like that.

            

Sex Toys Stall

As stated most of them were from Indonesia, and believe in Islam. Thus, they didn’t consume pork even they have to accompany their customers for a meal at the nearby Chinese stall. Source was from the Chinese stall owner, and through his expression, they really understand and still following the rules of their religion. It’s because of their biological factor and bad family background, makes them to be standing in front of the corridors. In short, they need the current job as simple as maintaining their life. They want to survive!

            

Looking for Customers

Through two times of observation, it makes all of us more understand about their group in terms of their living style. We need to respect them as a human right perspective. If they would like to come out from their community and come into town and study and find a job, please give them a chance to re-study their life. Everyone needs chance to go back to the right track. Instead of giving some negative elements to this group of people, why not giving them a golden opportunity to get into the normal human life? In other words, the world has to be balanced with this group of people. With their appearance, it could bring different perspectives of life so does the philosophy of the life journey to the people and the society.  


Photo Credits: Kan Yoke Loon, Leo






by Yee Jia Cheng, Jason @ ifunblock

Maid cafe

Have you heard of the popular maid cafes in Akihabara, Tokyo, Japan; such as cure, @home, and maidreamin? Don’t you just wish to visit one of those maid cafes? Because I myself dream of visiting a maid cafe in Japan! Perhaps, butler cafes too.

Maid Cafe, a very popular concept restaurant founded in Japan, is making its way to Malaysia’s shores, starting with the restaurant called Tenshi No Cafe at e@Curve. Being a sub-category of theme restaurants, a Maid Cafe features waitresses who are dressed like maids, in particular, French maids. Their job is to act as servants to please the patrons of the restaurants, also known as their masters/mistresses. At Tenshi, when customers arrive, they are supposed to be treated as if they have returned home, with the maids at their disposal. I have to say this is a pretty interesting concept, although I am not sure of how the idea would be accepted by the general public.

Last Wednesday, me and Jeffney had the opportunity to visit Tenshi No Cafe, and were pleasantly surprised by the kind and warm attention given by the 3 cute maids on duty that day. What makes a maid cafe stand out from the rest of the restaurants is the services they offer, apart from food! Don’t get me wrong, by services, I meant the following:

1. A Polaroid photo with the maid of your choice – RM8
2. A round of conventional games / PlayStation 3 with the maid (max. 5 minutes) – RM5
3. Spoon-feed by the maid – RM3 for 3 spoons

So does this tickle your fancy?  It’s really out of your imagination. The environment of the restaurant was largely pink and white, with a spacious area decorated with lots of Japanese figurines.

Since it was our first visit been there, we were shown the 10 commandments of Maid Cafe. Reading some of them was really amusing! But most importantly, they practice a strict policy of no photographing of the maid, and no interrupting the maid. Since it was restricted to take picture, we didn’t take much of pictures, as we worry to get notice.^_^

 

Jeffney had ordered a Karaggae, which is fried chicken fillet, and I ordered peach ice floss. The foods were nice, but the price a bit too high for us.

The maids were so cute and adorable. They purposely use a cute voice while taking order with us. And due our seats is very low, when the maid serving us, she was kneel down and taking order with us. The maid just treats us like her real masters.

The maid also offered us the member card as it’s our first time been time. The member card is to collect points for every visit, and we will rewarded by discounts.

It’s a good experience to a maid’s theme café. I would go again next time.

Crème Caramel

Even Valentine’s Day had passed, yet you still can do something to make your partner feel sweet~

You may handmade yours partner’s favorite dessert---Crème Caramel.

“Crème Caramel is the famous France dessert. It is a custard dessert with a layer of soft caramel on top, as opposed to crème brûlée, which is custard with a hard caramel top. The dish is eaten throughout the world.”

Here we start to do~

Preparation time: 20minutes

Cooking time: 20minutes

Portion: Four 150ml of ramekins

Ingredients of Custard 

160ml of whipping cream

160ml of milk

½ teaspoon of vanilla extract

2 slices of lemon peel (optional)

2 eggs

1 egg yolk

50g caster sugar

Proportionally hot water

Ingredients of Caramel

100g Caster sugar

50ml of water

Methods

1. Prepare Caramel: prepare saucepan, pour in water, then sugar, and stir it gently. With high heat, boil it, but do not engage in the mix. Continue to cook until dark brown. Remove from heat. (Once the sugar has started to caramelize, watch it carefully. It takes just seconds for caramel to go from great to burn.) Meanwhile, averagely poured caramel into four ramekins and wait to use.

2. Warm up the oven to 160C/320F. Meanwhile, mix together the egg yolks, caster sugar, and vanilla in a large mixing bowl. 

3. In a medium saucepan, bring in the milk, cream and lemon peel (optional) to just below a boil over medium-high heat.Place the mixing bowl on top of a towel to keep it from wobbling while whisking in the hot liquid. Slowly whisk in the hot milk mixture at a time, trying to prevent excess bubbles. 

4. Pour the custard strain through a sieve into the caramel-lined ramekins, fill the baking dish with water to come halfway up the sides of the ramekins. (laying a towel inside the baking dish to avoid the ramekin sliding, then place 4 ramekins wait to use.) Bake until just set, 25 to 50 minutes. (Baking time will depend on the thickness and depth of your ramekins and baking dish.)

5. Carefully remove the baking dish from the oven and let the ramekins cool in the water bath. Remove, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 3 hours.

6. Run a thin knife around the edge of the custard and invert onto a dessert plate, scraping any caramel from the ramekin onto the custard.

 Taaadaaa~~

♥♥Crème Caramel served♥♥

5minutes chocolate cake

Have you sudden feel want to have some dessert? Have you ever know you may make a cake within 10minutes? Have you ever try to bake a cake by a microwave? Here’s the way to do~ I tried and success~

5minutes chocolate cake  

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

Preparation time: 2minutes

Cooking time: 3minutes

Portion: 1 people

Ingredients

50g of Black chocolate

4 tablespoon of plain flour

3 tablespoon of caster sugar

3 tablespoon of unsalted butter

3 table spoon of milk

1 egg

¼ teaspoon of vanilla extract

Method

1. Put in chocolate and butter into a saucepan, and melt it by putting the chocolate mix saucepan in a big pot with fill in water, then low heat make it get melt, and wait for use.

2. Put in plain flour and sugar in to another saucepan, mix it well. Add eggs to stir. Then, pour in milk to whisk. Later on mix in the chocolate mix, and add in vanilla extract. Later on, pour into the big mug, which cover 60% of the mug.

3. Then, put it into oven, with bake under 1000watt and 3minutes. DONE

It's quick and easy rite?

Paint My Life

Cousin-sis graduated her Body Art Designing from Hong Kong few months ago and now she is opening her own shop which services included body art (temporary tattoo) and nail art at my hometown, Kuantan.

I was pay a visit to her shop and take an hour lesson at there as I am kinda interest on drawing.

And, I was took some pictures of her drawing while teaching me the skills.

Basic equipment for drawing, water color brushes and specialize poster colors for body art which are easy to remove with water

Begin to draw on black color paper without sketch

Sis said, the basic of body art course is drawing flower

The skill to learn of drawing flower is controlling the shade, if you are able to control it very well,

your flower will look more natural

Sis is very shy when I taking photo =x

Use white color to brings out the 3D effects

This is the one I draw in the 1 hour class

Obviously, my skill is not that good on the shade

As what people said, sis advised me, practice makes perfect

Or, beginner like me can draw with copying others' draw as it can makes us more easy and fast to point out how to draw

Here are some of cousin-sis's works

With skilled, sis always applied it on many different places such as phone cover, wall, book, nail (this is harder as the size of nails are so small), laptop cover and so on.

This is one of my phone covers which from sis 

She also draw on wall at her shop to celebrate this dragon-year

Notice the pink color thingy I holding?

That is another phone cover of mine and I draw myself

It is very simple

I will take another short-course during semester break to improve my drawing skills. 

It looks easy to complete drawing yet it is hard to make actually. 

Besides of the skill of drawing, you are required a good-sense of color-match.

Oh yea, body art but why it didn't draw on body?

It is because the basic of the course, drawing on paper before going to do temporary tattoo on body. 

Wish that I'm skilful to do body art after my next short-course.

*click on image to enlarge

by Jeffney Lim @ ifunblock

Home Made Yong Tau Foo

Yong Tau Foo is a Chinese soup dish with Hakka origins commonly found in Malaysia which brought from China. There are several selection of food items including fish balls, ladies fingers, chili and other seafood.

Some of these items, for example bitter-ground and chili are usually filled with fish paste. The items are sliced into small and bite-size pieces and cooked briefly and serve with the soup.

The are several options like noodles and rice mostly combine with those items also serve with sauces.

Yong Tau Foo (without Chili) 

Yong Tau Foo (with Chili)

Mum was helping up

Learning home made food not only giving you yourself a chance to learn different dishes but also a great opportunity for family members to share their cooking experience together. ^_^


by Yee Jia Cheng, Jason @ ifunblock

Fund Raising - Baking Cookies and Making Fruit Jelly

Sharing with you guys a great experience - Baking Cookies and Making Fruit Jelly for high school hall fund raising and Old Folks House Visit.

If we have done this Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) from small, for example, from primary school or high school, it really helps us not only raising the fund for school but also creating the "history" of your life so called "memorable moments".

Process of Making Love-Shape Cookies

I was helping around

Collecting our final "product"

Star-shape of Cookies

Fruit Jelly

Santa Cookies

Pandan Flavor Cookies

Enjoy the fun while doing cookies and dessert is the most funniest moment in your life. As the sharing photos with all of you, I'm proud of myself to have a great chance with my fellow classmates.


by Yee Jia Cheng, Jason @ ifunblock

It's called Memories!

In the last chapter of my story would like to share some memories' days and things with you. Especially the diaries which I have collected from 13 to 18 years old. These diaries have recorded all of my memories of high school also the experience of daily life during the memorable time.

Childhood Diary

Memorable Words

Memorable Words with Sticker

Putting Diary on the Desk

When you're boring during your primary school stage, I'm sure you would get a 20 cents or 50 cents coin to get an "egg" from the Eggie Box. Prizes like small cars or latest cartoon icon would be inside of the "egg".

What's inside?

Not only that, if you could sleep during your olden days, what would you be doing? I remembered my mum was pulling a string as picture showed below so that I could get sleep easily. When I grown up, this makes a different! With the innovation of technology and games of digital world, Game Boy has given a big impact into my life - challenge those games and score.

Wanna Sleep? 

Game Boy

by Yee Jia Cheng, Jason @ ifunblock