Be careful!! 注意！！

You see signs featured here everywhere in Japan. The bear warning sign being the most well known. And no this wasn't a sign seen anywhere around Tokyo. But the other 2 are.

カラス注意 karasu chuii　(beware of crow)
This is found near Tokyo high rise commercial area of Marunouchi （丸の内）warning that crow will attack for food and you should be very careful while you are enjoying your bento (弁と）or MacDonald.　
But if you work around that area, you might need to be more aware of glass garasu chuii （ガラス注意garasu chuii）2 days ago a piece of window glass fell from 21st from of Marunouchi building and a woman was hurt by the broken glass pieces. This sign sits 2-minute walk away from where this happen. See news item here. Sorry can't find an English version.

危険　スッポン・亀　注意 (beware of Chinese soft-shell turtle)
This is found around a pond in the largest temple in Kamakura（鎌倉） near Tokyo. Mum and dad saw plenty of kois there but no turtle.
The sign is perhaps more appropriate for the soft-shell turtles since they are considered as a cuisine in some exotic Japanese restaurants (and of course Chinese as well!!)
水魚, the common name for this species, is also a derogatory term in Cantonese for a gullible person. On a mahjong table if you keep losing to the more skillful players, you are known as 水魚.

Quiet!! Enjoy your ramen 一蘭 (Ichiran)

If you think cuisine should be enjoyed by sharing your experience at the point of consumption, Ichiran is not for you. Ichiran provides an environment where you do the minimal amount of talking and focus your energy solely on a great bowl of tonkotsu (pork bone soup) ramen (noodle). After you bought your meal tickets from the auto-vending machine outside, you go into the main restaurant which is basically rows of seats separated like library booths. Once inside, all you need to do is to decide on exactly how your bowl of ramen should come out. Unlike other ramen shops, you don't get a selection of soup base or toppings, instead you choose the texture of your noodles, how thick you want you soup and how spicy etc. For details check out their own website here.

Try it next time you're in Japan!!

Imperial Palace

Have you ever wonder why the Japanese gardens are so immaculate? Especially the garden around the Imperial Palace. A picture tells a thousand words, just imagine going through the garden performing such back-breaking routine clearing weeds 1-by-1!! And with Japan's aging problem, one should wonder how long before they need to import foreign workers just to maintain such magnificent gardens.

How often do you see a pair of swans swimming right below the bridge to Imperial Palace? Perhaps, a few times a day.

Tanabata Matsuri 七夕

Tanabata special edition cake from Sadaharu Aoki

So if you read the previous entry about the link between the Narco dog and the Don Quijote shop, you probably thinking we are stretching things a bit. And now you see another entry with yet another mix bag of photos, and you are right!! We're going to show you how a dog dressed in Yukata（浴衣）can be linked to a piece of cake, albeit in beautiful wrapping, and a street carnival celebration in Tokyo.

Tanabatta 七夕, is a Japanese festival celebrating one of the greatest fairy tale love story across East Asia. Check out the linked wikipedia entry for more details. Though also well known in Chinese folk tales, it's not celebrated in China to any extent. (In fact, not sure what else is celebrated in China other than money$$$.) In Japan, people wear traditional garment, yukata to attend events like fireworks and street festivals. And as you can see, some of the beloved doggies (aka わんちゃん, wan chan, humanize them as kids) also wear yukata out.

But then what about the piece of cake, which looked more like a French dessert than Japanese. This is a Tanabata special edition cake from Sadaharu Aoki, an upscale French patisserie in Tokyo. See this link to see more about this special. The exquisitely presented cake has this transparent sugar decoration on top which is meant to be the Milky Way which separates Orihime (織り姫）and Kengyuu（牽牛）but in this case it's what separates our mouths from the delicious macaron at the end. There is one more link between Yukata and this cake. If you wear Yukata to go and buy desserts for takeaway from one of its shops spending over 2,000 yen during the speical period from 1 Jul to 7 Jul, you will get a free baked dessert.

Don't be surprised びっくりしないでね。

Hi all, there's been no posts from us for 1½ months through a combo of laziness and lack of inspirations. It's not as if the the last 6 weeks has not been eventful:
Susan Boyle lost in Britain got Talent and got checked into a mental hospital.
On the eve of 20th anniversary of June 4th Tiananmen incident, our government managed to build the longest and biggest firewall in history against foreign evil influence, including blogspots like us.
MJ died at home probably from drug overdose which then bring us the biggest media event ever.
....
But this blog is about happier things and so none of the above qualifies.

Finally, we can bring you something different. Mum and dad went to Tokyo last weekend and came back with some photos and memories to share with us. But you might ask why is the first post headed by a poster of Labrador and a picture of the Don Quijote shop in Roppongi, Tokyo. What's the connection?

The star in the poster, Rocky, is a retired Narco dog owned by Japanese Customs. This is placed prominently near the luggage conveyor belt in Narita airport. After coming through the shortest immigration queue ever, this poster is the first thing which greeted mum and dad. Basically, it says,
"Even though though I am already retired, my many apprentices will search for the smell of drugs in the premise. So don't be surprised!!"
While dad didn't see any sniffer dogs walking around the luggage area, he wasn't sure if this poster was meant to be a deterrent for drug traffickers going through Japanese airport. As most of these bad characters are deemed to be gaijin (foreigners), they will only look at the poster and think cute dog!! Or did all the younglings were taken back to training after they failed to find the 142 grams to cannabis that Japan Customs planted on some Narita passenger's luggage in May last year.
Everything soon becomes clearer when mum and dad walked through customs.

"Where do you come from?", so started the normal sequence of Custom's questions.
"Hong Kong."......

It was wrong to expect going through after the standard sequence of questions. Every single piece of luggage was searched thoroughly and then just when they thought they are walking through, mum and dad were asked to be body-searched. The whole process was done with the usual Japanese politeness. While waiting for mum to be searched, dad said to the officer who did his search in his broken Japanese, "I don't carry drugs!!" (麻薬をもってない！！）Then the officer said, "High alert from Hong Kong!!" Only then did dad realise what was going on and so he said in frustration, "we are not younglings!!" （若い者がじゃない！！）The officer just shrugged his shoulder and walked away. Mum even got asked to take off her shoes behind the partitions where they had their searches done.

So that's how the picture of Don Quijote got linked to the first picture of Rocky. This was the exact shop where Kelvin Kwan and Jill Vidal (關楚耀 and 衛詩) were found carrying cannabis as a result of a suspected theft. This was briefly mentioned in another entry here. Police subsequently found heroin in the hotel where Jill was staying. Of course all these drug trafficking went on under the nose of Rocky's apprentices and Japan Customs, who probably had the impression that young tourists from Hong Kong were a bunch of mad fashion followers going to Harajuku before this incident. But now, they are no different to Colombian drug lords.

Dad told mum that she should take it as a compliment that the female officer searched her so thoroughly!!

Dog Food - musings on beef

We always wonder why we get to eat tiny tidbits of beef and only after torturous demand of doing all these "Hand! Down! Rollover! etc etc". And our daily meal is the from the same bag of processed lamb and rice. It's strange, because beef is mum and dad's favorite and they go through all the trouble to order every thing beefy under the sun, Black Angus, Wagyu from Japan and Australia, grain fed, blah blah blah.

We wouldn't mind a bowl of Gyudon 牛丼 for breakfast once in a while. This beef on rice in a bowl, popularized by Yoshinoya as a fast food all over the world, had its roots as dog's supper. The legend has it that during the Meiji era when Japanese was first introduced to red meat (note during Edo era, eating red meat was banned in Japan), a Japanese man saw a Western woman fed her dogs with leftover beef stew over rice. The Japanese man followed the recipe and started selling the dish. For the full Japanese article on this topic, please refer to http://www.joqr.co.jp/meister/kunimaru/051003.html. In fact Gyudon is aka Kame Chabu, ie dog's dinner, where Kame was from "Come!Come!". Spare a thought for us next time you go to Yoshinoya.

Back to why we don't get beef for our regular meals. Apparently we get sick from allergies from eating beef protein. For similar reasons, chicken is not a good diet for us either. That's why lamb and rice is often recommended to reduce itchy skin.

Pork is no good for us for a different set of reasons. They are difficult to digest and have more chance of harbouring parasites.

But still hope we get a bite next time when they grill the wagyu beef.

Tim Ho Wan 添好運

It has been a while since the last entry we did on our friend Cameron due to a lack of inspirations. The weather certainly doesn't help. Every time we take a walk we end up coming back drenched like a chicken to the slaughter (落湯雞 is a Chinese colloquial saying for drenched or soaked through, which literally means chicken fallen into hot soup. It has its roots in the Ming dynasty, 1368-1644. The closest English idiom is perhaps drowned rat.) After starting out as the driest May for the last 40 years when you could feel the autumn breeze walking at night, it has all gone horribly wrong for us.

Back to the topic of our entry, this is a restaurant that mum read about in the online version of Time Out magazine a few weeks ago. So a rainy Sunday morning sounded like the perfect time to go and try the place out. It turned out the rain helped in the queuing time.

Traffic was light. The journey from Hong Kong island to Wylie Road turning into Waterloo Road was exactly as directed by Google map but then it went all horribly wrong, "No Right Turn" into Dundas Street. Aiyah!! For a free service, it's not bad. Mum and dad finally found the right route in by asking around and parked into a multi-storey carpark in Dundas Street (update - Hang Lung carpark HK$7 per 15mins, not too bad space-wise; there was a Ferrari parked there. It turned out that there's another multi-storey carpark right opposite the restaurant in Paradise Square 百利達廣場.) It was a short walk to the restaurant in Kwong Wa Street and people were already queuing up despite the rain. Mum and dad got ticket number 24 when number 2 was just being seated. There were 20 tables. You can imagine the rest. But the rain seemed to have cut the queue by more than half and they were seated in about 20 minutes. 17 to 22 all went "MIA".

The claim to fame of Tim Ho Wan is it's opened by the former dim sum chef of the only Michelin 3 star restaurant in Hong Kong, Lun King Heen in the Four Seasons Hotel. Whether Lun King Heen is worth all its stars is another issue. But it was definitely worth the wait in the rain. Go there before the quality goes downhill as in the case of most small restaurants in Hong Kong after they opened.

Must try :-
Chicken glutinous rice wrapped in lotus leaf 古法糯米雞 HK$18- the rice is soft and the ingredients are juicy with the faint fragrance of lotus leaf.
Char Siu in crispy bun 脆皮叉燒包 HK$12 - very tasty and crispy top.
Chinese Sponge Cake 馬拉糕 HK$10 - delicious and don't worry about the side effects of eating them.
Fried Turnip Cake 臘味蘿蔔糕 HK$10 - can taste the shredded radish and it was well fried with a crispy skin. A lot of places you get more dough than shredded radish.

Dog Roll and South Stream Seafood

So what's this dog got to do with dog roll and seafood? He is Cameron, the house dog for South Stream Seafood and apparently he is trading toys with dog roll. Seafood and dog roll don't sound like they come together. But in the case of South Stream, they do. In fact, when the delivery man comes to the door, often he has more meat than seafood, because the whole family are carnivores. Yummy!! We don't get dog roll all the time, sometimes we get beef rib bones on, which are good for our teeth. If we are good, we get these perhaps once in a month or two. Meanwhile, this weekend, mum and dad had all their meat and fish for both lunch and dinner from South Stream. When they went to this magnificent house in Barker Rd for a house-warming bbq, the owners got all the meat and fish there. Mum and dad like recommending go places to their friends. Remember to get us some dog roll this coming weekend!!
http://www.south-stream-seafoods.com/store/index.html

Garden Produce

Last night mum and dad got all excited during dinner. You would have thought they just made something special like Kobe Wagyu. It was just a few stalks of beans fried in butter with a bunch of other veg. We have seen those every time we had our exploratory trip around the garden. Just a few sickly looking plant trailing up the trellis and not enough even for us to snack on!! Apparently, they tasted better but we had no way to tell as we were not invited to the tasting. Guess it's all in their minds, seeing the beans from seeds to plant.

If you like organic garden produce, ie not something from huge scale intensive farming that you get in supermarkets, planting your own is not really a solution even if you have some space. Your best bet is to go to the Organic Farmers' Market in Star Ferry on Sunday. Apparently they have one on Wednesday as well, but mum and dad have never been. More on this in a later entry.

Epsom Salt 瀉鹽

First and foremost, Epsom salt is not your everyday seasoning like rock salt, sea salt, table salt, which are all variants of the same thing sodium chloride NaCl. It is the common name of magnesium sulfate. And you won't want to add it to your food like any seasoning, because as the Chinese name suggests, it's a laxative and often use in conjunction with lemon juice as a folk remedy for colonic cleansing. It's also a component of bath salt among some of its other uses.

Magnesium is essential to the formation of the green stuff, chlorophyll, in plants. The photo shows the difference Epsom salt made to our chilli pepper. We use 1tsp of Epsom Salt for 1 to 2 litres of water.

You probably won't find Epsom salt in your average garden centre. Go to your local pharmacy for these. Of course you need the Chinese name, otherwise most local wouldn't have a clue.

Black Kite (麻鷹)

Whenever Hong Kong gets a clear sky, we see many of these flying machines circle over our heads and we never really know what they are called. They are Black Kite, the most common raptor found in Hong Kong and they have adapted well to our city life and thrive by picking up rubbish and dead animals around us. We caught sight of one sunbathing on top of the scaffolding the other morning. Wish we can fly like them, but at least we don't need to pick on rubbish to feed ourselves.

We see birds flying around all the time, but it's not easy to get a clear view of them. And when we do see them, we are too busy chasing after them to take a photo. Like the ones who took our peaches before, they are red-whiskered bulbul(紅耳鵯). It will probably be awhile before we get a photo of those rascals. But you will be the first to know when we do.

Random Walk up Mount Butler

You must be familiar with the government TV advert about how you should be prepared before trekking around country parks in Hong Kong, like tell your friends, bring plenty of water, bring a phone, etc etc. (You know the one where the kid fell down in the middle of some godforsaken place!!) We always thought mum and dad are sensible people and would do the intelligent thing. But how about bringing us for a walk without any of the following: phone, wallet, money, water. Believe it or not, all they had was a lighter, a cigar and newspaper for our poop. But what started out as our usual half hour there-and-back walk turned into 2 and a half hour marathon up and down hill. We started out 4:45pm on Labour day and didn't get home till after 7:15pm. The true meaning of labour. Just as well they took a taxi home from Quarry Bay.......

Take a look at the map and imagine our crazy day. And bear in mind that some of the steps were even higher than our bodies. But it was fun walking up and maybe we can get some pictures taken next time when they are better prepared!


View Random Walk in a larger map

Doggy Desserts and Carob

Buddy had his birthday muffin made for him last year and then mum went to learn baking doggy biscuits in Three Dog Bakery. And then it all stopped. No more home baked stuff after Cadet went to heaven. Sob :(

Last week dad pulled out this book about baking for dogs called Doggy Desserts by Cheryl Gianfrancesco and started flipping through the pages. Next he saw 3 packs of Carob chips that mum got from her colleague from the US still in their original wrappings. Our luck changed.

A day later, they bought some organic wholemeal flour from "Great". Soon after dad messing around with the spatula in the kitchen putting all the below ingredients together, the muffin mix was ready. 25 minutes in the oven and this Banana Carob Chip Muffins came out as if by magic. Mum and dad had a taste of it. Yummy!!

1.75 cups wholemeal flour
0.25 cup honey
0.50 cup carob chips
1.00 egg
0.25 cup veggie oil
0.25 cup milk
1.00 mashed up banana (pick a ripe one)
1.00 tsp baking powder
1.00 tsp baking soda

Our only comment is the muffin taste more like human food than dog food. All good for us. Check out the book for more exciting experiments and lets hope we get more from the home bakery.



NB - Carob is an excellent source of pectin which makes it a good colon cleanser. More on carob in wikipedia.
Also if any of you know where one can buy carob chips in Hong Kong, please let us know.
We will talk about another good colon cleanser, epsom salt in another article.

Bad birdies

Of course this is a different type of birdies that everyone is trying to get in golf. These are the birdies which pecked away our beloved peaches from the 2 small peach trees in our balcony. Mum and dad got them after they saw a similar tree in the flower show last month. And then 2 weeks ago when we went up to the balcony, we smelt the smell of ripen peaches. Surprise, surprise, those fruits are not for us. All we can do was looking up and hoping that we will get given one!!

The birdies which visited the balcony don't need permission, they just flew down and took liberty in feasting themselves to the peaches still hanging on the trees. Mum and dad noticed that one were eaten when they went up last night and now there are 3 more destroyed goods. The birdies did one good thing for us though, they forced an early harvest of all the ripen fruit. We will get to share the spoil.

Mind you if mum and dad are not careful, we might get bad birdies visiting during the day and scary fruit bats swooping in at night. Check out Mount Butler Drive after 9pm, you will find quite a few fruit bats flying around there!!

A great way to bond

Whenever we walk past pet shops and see other mutts being groomed by the pet-shop groomers, we always thought these mutts do not know what they are missing. We just had one of our regular grooming sessions and we are looking smart again. Mum and dad will always take an extra good look at us whenever we get our coat groom, just a great way to bond. You should ask your parents to groom you as well. After all, when you see some of the gremlins which come out from the pet shop after being groomed by "professional", you have only got yourself to blame if you don't ask.

Finally, it's Buddy's turn!!

Another visitor

We are always delighted to see butterflies and we even tried to chase after them. You don't need us to tell you what happen afterward....... There seems to be more butterflies in the garden nowadays and yu won't be surprise when you see this picture. Again, not mum's cup of tea and they destroy her precious plants. The caterpillars always get taken outside to the public park when they are found.

Resident Spider

There are plenty of creepy crawlies living in our area and some decide to settle down in our garden without so much of an invitation. This spider for instance have been sewn its web on our largest tree for the last 2-3 weeks.

Mum is always worry that one day it will crawl out of its web and jump on her while she's on the couch watching TV. Just like all the horror movies she watched!!

NB Water is spray on hoping to get the documentary-like effect, but probably need a longer lens to capture the effect properly.

Animal Interruptions

In Hong Kong, most places have the no dogs allowed sign posted everywhere. So unlike our cousins in say Paris who can go into a department store or a street-side cafe without fear, we can't go anywhere openly. Some other dogs travel around hiding in carrier bags, but we are not a big fan of those bags.

The picture above is from the Reuters news site with the caption below:
http://www.reuters.com/news/pictures/rpSlideshows?articleId=USRTXE880#a=10

An umpire orders a dog that disrupted play off the pitch in the opening game of the 2009 Indian Premier League (IPL) Twenty20 cricket tournament between the Mumbai Indians and Chennai Super Kings in Cape Town, South Africa, April 18, 2009.

REUTERS/Mike Hutchings

Whose dog was it? How can it get on the pitch to start with? He doesn't look like a mascot. Perhaps dogs are allowed to watch cricket in South Africa.

Just an aside, IPL is the richest cricket tournament in the world and it's being held in South Africa instead of India because of security reasons.

Dreaming about $$$ - Part2

Little do I know the relevance of this photo in relation to the title and it can be turned into reality. The photo above was from the same series as a blog entry from 2 years ago. "Hedge Hogging" is all about hedge funds, from a unique perspective of a veteran market practitioner in starting a hedge fund. Insights into how hedge funds make money and why some eventually failed. This is a great book to read again given that hedge funds have turned from studs to duds in the 2 years since the photo was taken. Of course, Scottie is still dreaming about money and all the treats in the world that money can buy!!!



More importantly, auntie has been nagging us to put all our favorite books in the blog and have them linked to Amazon. If you find these books interesting, click on the links and eventually buy the book. You can help us realise our dreams of eternal supply of delicious tidbits. Of course, we will do our level best to get mum and dad to put more of these reviews on our blog and keep improving them after they are published. Happy reading and keep dreaming.

16,444,444 Youtube hits and counting

Every morning, our radio get switched on and we get to listen to all sorts of mumbo jumbo blasting through the airwaves by Commercial Radio 2 (CR2). On a Clear Day (在晴朗的一天出發) is our favorite, not that we have any choice in the matter.

This morning we heard this name, Susan Boyle, repeated many times. Once you see the youtube clip below, you will know why. Lets enjoy the music and be absolutely stunned like everybody else the world over.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY

What is also interesting is the link below:

http://news.google.com.hk/news/story?q=susan+boyle&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ncl=dfvddUE-MFIZ4rM&hl=en&ei=bvPnSYXvPIaMkAWBseCVBw&sa=X&oi=news_result&ct=more-results&resnum=1

This shows you the surge of worldwide interest in the subject in the last few days, noting that the episode of "Britain got Talent 2009" was broadcast on 11 April 2009.

Move over "Trouble", Obama "Bo" taking over

The most famous dog in the world - this title belongs to "Trouble" who inherited US$12,000,000 after her owner, Leona Helmsley died last year. She's been involved in court battle and death threats since. Poor girl!!

But now, if you take "Trou" out of "Trouble", you get "Bo". The new title owner of the world's most famous dog, the First Dog and yes Obama family dog. As widely reported, he is a Portugese Water dog.

This breed is apparently good for allergic persons as the coat sheds little to no hair and is virtually hypo-allergenic.

Just when you thought 12m is a big number, Bo being the First Dog will have an impact on Obama's decisions on the economy, probably not to the same extent as Nancy Reagan and her astrologer, but just the TARP program alone is worth US$700,000,000,000.

Perhaps Bo will get death threats if the government can't get the economy going again. But meanwhile, lets wish her a peaceful life in the White House.

More Orchids

Another batch of blooms. These orchids are different.

For my fans

You probably wondering why there are no recent photo updates from us. All you see are dad's photos of one thing or another except us. Of course, we have our own way to remind them who are the precious ones. So I, Scottie, decided to go and pee in mum and dad's bathroom, while mum fell asleep and dad was on the computer!!...... So now they know.

And you get a photo of me. But Buddy is too busy watching his goldfish, so no photo for him, only what he's looking at.

Creepy Crawlies and Slimy Creatures

The warmer season is coming back to us again. At night we can see little shadows dotted around the street we walk. Sometimes they are just wilted leaves but often they will jump when we decide to pounce on them. They are the local colonies of frogs which make a huge symphony of noise late into midnight. It's not the famous "ribbit" (US frog's sound) or "croak" (UK frog's sound) but more like "kwaak kwaak" (German frog's sound). Chasing these slimy creatures is our favourite pastimes, probably not mum and dad's cup of tea though. They crawl up on walls, jump around the backyard and last night even jumped into the house!! They come in different colours and sizes. But then we can't tell and don't care what species they are.

Of course, there are plenty others that get mum excited. Some even we can't see properly and especially the beautiful colours.

A few more from the Flower Show 2009

Just got hold of some more photos taken during the Flower Show. One on the right - one of the many bonsais on display during show. On the left are the mascots of the event. When mum and dad went there on the final day, the mascots have already wilted and the weather was overcast. So they had to settle with the pictures taken using auntie's mobile phone. But the quality was surprisingly good!

Pineapple

Ever since dad decided to put more of an effort to update this blog, he's been busy taking photos of everything around the house and anything that's new to the house. And yesterday, he was busy with a pineapple. He made pineapple and mango granita with the fruit and he's also trying to grow a pineapple plant from the green stem. The recipe for the granita was simple and if the pineapple stem does take root, he will show its progress on this blog as well. We tasted a tiny bit of the granita as a treat today, it was really refreshing, so unlike the food we eat everyday!!

Cattleya Orchids

The white-washed walls in our house, which only had a few framed photos of Peter Lik, have seen a surge of bright colours recently. Mum literally went "flower crazy" when she visited the Hong Kong Flower Show 2009. When we drove past Victoria Park the first Sunday when the show was held, the park was jam-packed with people. As always, mum was put of by the crowd. A few days later mum and dad went there in the evening when it was much quieter. The quality and variety on offer were impressive and the prices are much cheaper than what you get in the Flower Market of Mongkok (near Prince Edward MTR Station).
Mum is having some success with her recent batch of orchids, which unlike everything before them, have started to flower again after the the first lot of flowers wilted. She set her sights on the more exotic varieties during the flower show and brought some weird stuff. Be your own judge and take a look at the photos.
Both photos are both Cattleya orchids. Perhaps dad will take pictures of the other varieties we see later.

Li's Family Dishes Restaurant 厲家菜

As soon as we stepped into the house from our nightly after-dinner walk, mum casually mentioned that the TVB foodie show "日日有食神V" (Gourmet Secret Agent Season5) was showing Li's Family Dishes Restaurant 厲家菜. While we were always wary of foodie recommending their local restaurants in their columns or TV shows, recommendations on foreign soil were usually safer; fewer chances of conflict of interests ensure a more unbiased view. After all, this was a restaurant that mum and dad tried in Beijing last November before seeing or reading any reviews or recommendations. And dad, ever so picky about famous restaurants, was truly impressed by the parade of different tastes on offer in that one meal.

Tucked inside one of Beijing's fast disappearing hutongs 胡同, the location isn't what you would associate with emperor's cuisine. But this is what Li's Family is famous for. Mum has reserved the table several days before going to Beijing and their driver appeared lost when trying to get there. But once they found the place, they got ushered into a small room with two small tables, one fit for 4 people and the other, which they were seated, fit for 2 people. The waitress went through the menu quickly. Mum and dad went through their usual ritual of agonising over which dishes to order. It's been made easier because the whole menu was based on one basic tasting menu and you get some extra dishes by ordering the more expensive courses. They ordered 2 different sets with one extra item different in each set.

The food came and they were in tiny portions which we can no doubt finish in one gulp. But everything has a unique taste and a unique texture. One wouldn't normally associate with simple Chinese dishes as refine, but the creations here were delicious as well as refine. It wasn't long before mum and dad finished all the dishes. As they were no big-eaters, the small portions were just perfect. They left with their stomachs satisfied and taste buds fully challenged, but without the usual urge to take a nap after a heavy Chinese meal.

As you can see the prices were not cheap, but they reckoned the food was worth every penny. Below is an excerpt from the TVB.com on this restaurant.

宮廷風味宴 由厲氏後人主理的宮廷風味菜，可謂來頭不小。厲家菜菜館創辦人、現年八十多歲的厲善麟教授，為滿族白旗人後代， 爺爺於清朝同治、光緒年間，擔任內務府大臣，主管宮廷衣食。退休之後，將記憶中的宮廷菜寫成食譜，傳給厲氏後人。「厲家菜」的宮廷風味宴的特色在於菜式 多，單是前菜小碟已有十款，賣相精緻之餘，用料與做法都相當講究。鎮店名菜包括鼓板大蝦、北京熏肉、翡翠豆腐、鴨包翅等都大受食客歡迎，難怪世界首富蓋 茨、武俠小說宗師查良鏞先生，甚至末代皇帝溥儀胞弟溥傑都是座上客之一。

厲家菜
食神推介：鼓板大蝦、翡翠豆腐、鴨包翅、炸藕盒、糖醋排骨
店舖地址：西城區德內大街羊房胡同11號
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Eventful few days

The blog pages have been filled with travelogues and food blogs. Needless to say, mum and dad have been neglecting us, until 2 days ago. We went to the SPCA in Sai Kung to visit Rocky, a 4-month old female Schnauzer found abandoned in the street. We realized why she's called Rocky why we met her in the adoption centre.
We waited for a few minutes outside the cubicle where Rocky stayed. The door opened and we sniffed our way into the the cubicle. So many different smells surged through at once, guess a lot of our relatives have left their marks there. Before we knew it, there's this ball of black fur jetting around inside. Upon seeing us, she stopped running and started the customary friendly sniff. But that didn't last long, she started running around and jumping on us while we were busy getting dad's attention. The thought of another mutt sharing the love was on top of our mind and we didn't really bother to play with Rocky. But Rocky kept coming back for more and when Scottie jumped round and stepped on Rocky with his hind legs, she made a high-pitch squeak and that was the only sound that we heard Rocky made. While running around, she would traget on anything that she could land her teeth on. She bite on shoe laces and trousers. Perhaps her teeth were itching to grow just like when we were younger but maybe she's a destroyer reincarnated. The session lasted for about 5 minutes but we could tell that dad think Rocky will make a good companion for the two of us. Not sure how he came to that conclusion when even we couldn't tell. But at least we didn't start barking as soon as we saw Rocky, unlike some others we saw before.

The staff in SPCA told dad that he was eighth on the queue for adopting Rocky and chances were not great. When mum checked out Rocky's status yesterday with SPCA, they told her Rocky has been adopted. Lets hope she found a good home and good hungry companions like us.
And last night we had our shower. It's worth talking about because mum and dad haven't showered us for a long time. Our helper has been doing that recently. But last night mum found that Scottie had a bad patch of allergic skin so decided it's time to give him a quick shave and a medicated shampoo shower. Maybe we will get mum and dad to show you our photos before and after grooming next time.

Tapeo Wyndham St

Do you ever wonder why anyone would bother reading blogs written by complete morons like us? Perhaps you are less likely to pick dodgy places than going to places recommended by the "true" gourmets who get paid handsomely to endorse trendy places with their taste buds.

There was a small article in the latest Cathay Pacific in-flight magazine, Discovery, about a Tapas bar on Wyndham Street called Tapeo. Invariably, you get the usual dose of how wonderful this little restaurant is. Or what a rare find you get tucked in this chic corner between Wyndham Street and Holywood Road. You can get a taste of the article from TimeOut here.

First imagine the places that we, mutts walk past all day long; then read this.

You get your wonderful Veuve Cliquot champagne or the Burdundy white wine served to you ice-cold and the wine bottles are kept that way in an icebox. But little do you know that, the cocktails and the ice water that you get served are from the same icebox. Yes it is like "Sleeping with the Enemies". The sight of the barman shoveling ice cubes from that box literally had dad frozen at the bar. Now roll back 10 seconds and think the places we walk past........

Tian Tian Hainanese Chicken Rice 天天海南雞飯

It feels like mum and dad are never home these days and they disappeared again for a few days this weekend after having done so last weekend. Lucky that we never developed separation anxiety syndrome (we only suffer from not-enough-treat syndrome). Last week they kept talking about Portuguese food in Macau and dim sum at the old Lisboa; now they talk about the funeral that they went to and Hainanese chicken rice.

The urge for food hunting goes in the family, it's little wonder that we feel hungry all day long. They went to the Maxwell Hawker Center after they landed in Changi Airport. It was almost 3 in the afternoon and there was still this queue of 15-16 people outside the small shop front of Tian Tian. Grandpa was there securing a table while dad queue behind a Japanese couple with their baby in a pram. It was a multinational queue with local people as well as Japanese youngsters and Hong Kong girls. All Asians though, strange given that mum and dad only learnt about the place from Antony Bourdain's TV Series "No Reservations". Enough preamble. Cut right to the chicken and the rice. Chicken was very soft and smooth and the rice was very fragrant. The chilli sauce was hot!! Unlike most other shops, it didn't have crushed ginger. If queues of people don't put you off, then this shop probably offers you the best chicken rice that money can buy and best of all you don't pay a lot for the privilege to try. For a whole chicken, you pay SGD 22 and you pay no extra for having half a chicken, ie SGD 11. And the rice which in Bourdain's word "so fragrant that you can just eat on its own" cost just SGD 50 cents.

Again no pictures taken, but plenty of other bloggers have theirs on flickrs and here is a good recent example. The picture quality is better than what you will see in the shop now, as the real ones have severely faded colours. You can see Bourdain's endorsement on the right-hand top corner. Right next to it, there was a Japanese article comparing chicken rice in Singapore "チキンライス 食べ比べ", this perhaps explains why there are so many Japanese in the queue. In fact there's a blog entry about the shop just 5 days ago in Japanese.

Food blogs

Never understand how food bloggers get so many beautiful pictures in their blogs. Every time we see our breakfast or the long awaited treats, we will do our 100-meter dash and everything disappears within not more than 3 minutes! When dad went to Kenjo見城 in TST for Japanese sushi lunch last week, there were 2 ladies who spent more time taking pictures of the set lunch they share than actually eating. Doing food blog is probably a good way to lose weight.

Just imagine doing the same in the Fat Duck in the UK while having the tasting menu of more than 10 courses. Perhaps that's why, mum and dad never took any pictures there during their visit 5 years ago. But they kept saying that it was one of the best meals they ever had among all the Michelin-star restaurants that they tried. Just as well they were there 5 years ago and not now, apparently 400 people (yes not 40) have fallen ill eating there recently. Perhaps it was one of its many gadgets that failed, but at this point nobody is certain. Better stick to instant noodles, you never hear people getting sick from eating the odd packet of instant noodles, as long as they don't get the instant dumplings as well. (note all these poison dumplings that were reported throughout Japan claimed to be home-made 手作り餃子)

Instant Noodles インスタントラーメン - recently dad tried this brand 河村通夫の大自然ラーメン 胡麻醤油 from a Japanese speciality store. The packet claims to use all things natural and Japanese flour for the noodles. For HK$ 9.50, it's a bit more expensive than the local brands but reasonable given that it costs Yen 110 in Japan. The texture of the noodle is more chewy and the soup base is delicious with real sesame. Always cook the instant noodles according to the instructions, normally 3 minutes in boiling water is enough. Otherwise, they invariably become instant congee.

PS Michelin-star restaurants' business must be getting tough in London. While Heston Blumenthal of the Fat Duck lost hundreds of thousands of sterling in business during the temporary closure, Gordon Ramsay is having his own kitchen nightmares. His company, Gordon Ramsay Holdings (GRH), is in breach of debt covenants as reported in the much delayed annual report. Usually delays in releasing financial statements are really bad signs for a company.
Again mum and dad never took any pictures from the two different Gordon Ramsay's restaurants they visited 5 years ago. Shoots!! That's why we can't be food bloggers.

A different angle

Hardly a day goes by without hearing people caught up in drug abuse, from Olympic superhero Michael Phelps to the not-so-famous singers Kelvin Kwan and Jill Vidal in Hong Kong. All you hear are the same knee-jerk righteous condemnation of "Thou shalt not take drugs", "terrible role models", blah blah blah. Lets look at it from a different angle, as we mutts do all day long.

As the picture of Phelps smoking pot shows, he's not really "smoking" pot but instead inhaling cannabis through a vaporizer. You might say, "What the hack, he's still taking drugs!" Legally, either way, it's bad. But vaporizing is a safe form of cannabinoid delivery while smoking is really bad for you. Cannabis smoke has more ammonia, hydrogen cyanide and nitric oxide than cigarette smoke, which in turn is more harmful to your body than taking cannabis vapour. Better not go into the whole legality of cannabis vs cigarettes or alcohol issue. The medical journal, Lancet has a very interesting comparing the effects of many common drugs.

So Michael Phelps is a role model after all, he's doing it the "right" way. The "wrong" way obviously was what Kelvin and Jill did, smoke a cannabis joint.

By the same token, when the Hong Kong department of health was saying that the "electronic cigarettes" are more harmful than a packet of fags simply on the notion of higher nicotine content, it's ignoring the method of delivery and the harmful by-products.

Citronella Plant

Got some citronella plants （驅蚊草） from Mongkok the other day. For HKD 20, they are a good little herb to grow at home. The smell is pleasant and in fact if you go to Thailand for holidays, you would notice the smell immediately.

If you think they are going to drive mosquitoes away as they claim in the flower market, you are probably out of luck. As most studies indicates that the plant is ineffective in mosquito repelling.