Coming to a petrol station near you

Dinner at Asahikawa 旭川

蜂屋のラメン

Furano! 富良野

Furano 富良野 is famous for its lavender field in the summer and Tomita Farm ファーム富田 is perhaps the most well known. We shall just let the picture do the talking.

While the bumble bee worked hard for the honey......,

mum worked hard on the camera!!

Lavender Cream Puff ラベンダーシュークリーム - Our favorite too!!

En route to Furano

The heavy rain stopped. As they drove towards their next destination, Furano, the sky started to brighten. The contrast in weather was uplifting. The drive from Otaru 小樽 to Furano 富良野 was just under 3 hours and they made pit-stops whenever there was anything exciting en route.

The first stop was Sandan Taki 三段滝, which literally means 3-step waterfall. It wasn't a planned stop, so they haven't seen any photos or description of the place before.

Shortly after the waterfall pit-stop, they made another unplanned stop at an Rokkatei outlet just outside Furano. Guess mum couldn't wait for another 6 days before they would get to its main store in Obihiro　帯広. With a bank of floor-to-ceiling windows looking out to rows and rows of grape vines, the place was reminiscent of vineyards in Napa Valley and New Zealand. This outlet even got a decidedly fancy name, Campana della Vigna, カンパーナ六花亭.　http://www.rokkatei.co.jp/facilities/campana.html

The fresh grape soft ice cream looked decidedly yummy!! It was one of the special items limited to the Campana shop made from the locally produced Furano grape juice.ぶどうソフトー 富良野産ぶどう果汁を使ったソフトクリーム。

Evening in Otaru

It was pouring with rain when they first landed in New Chitose Airport. Everything looked immaculate and they only realized later that the airport had only been in use since late March 2010.

After they pick up their rental Toyota and started their journey towards Otaru in the north western coast of Hokkaido, the rain just got heavier. The horrible thought of nine more days of bad weather stuck in a rental car started sinking into dad's mind!! The rain lightened up into a drizzle when they get to the new LeTao outlet not far from the original shop. Mum made a pit-stop into her favorite dessert shop with auntie J. After picking up her cheese cake and a few snacks, the shop assistants were already half-way into closing up shop. It was just past 6 o'clock.


After keying in the phone number of the budget hotel they booked through Jalan.net, the GPS show another 1.8km to the hotel and they had no issues finding the place. Mum dropped her jaw when she saw there's another LeTao outlet right next to the hotel and it didn't close until 7 o'clock!!

The room was small but it had everything. Perfect for staying the night, but it wasn't the place to sit around and take your time. So as soon as they dropped their suitcases off and refreshed themselves, they headed out to the Otaru canal. Even though they have been to Otaru twice before this trip, they never saw the canal lighted up.

The canal had a certain magical quality with its lighting. 

They had sushi in the original store of Otaru Masa Sushi, where they had lunch during their first trip to Hokkaido, more than six years ago. The food was still good but it was no longer as memorable as the first trip. Perhaps they should just go for conveyor belt sushi like Sushi Zanmai next time.

小樽まさすしのつぶ貝

Otaru Sushi Zanmai 小樽すしざんまい, just opened in June 2010 looked like it's getting a decent following already.　http://www.kiyomura.co.jp/shop/shop36_otr01-00.html

Otaru Sushi Zanmai 小樽すしざんまい

This budget hotel offers a buffet breakfast with a selection of grilled vegetables and seafood. Best of all, dogs are allowed to stay in the hotel. If only mum and dad could bring us along!!

Dormy Inn Otaru ドーミーイン小樽

 

 

 

Dormy Inn Otaru ドーミーイン小樽

Dormy Inn Otaru ドーミーイン小樽

Back from Hokkaido!! Yahoooo!!

Blossoming lavender in Farm Tomita in Furano. 

富良野のファーム富田

Mouthwatering desserts from Rokkatei (Maron creme mont blanc)

六花亭のモンブラン

We shall bring you their selected photos, videos, but here is a taste of what to expect.

So Hot!! (Part2)

If you are squeamish about taking Chinese medicine, perhaps you should eat more vegetables in this weather. Trouble is a lot of the vegetables from the supermarket are imports. By the time they get to your hands, it has been several days since they were picked. The farmers' market in the new Star Ferry Terminal in Central is her favorite spot to get fresh veggies. This open-air market is only opened on Wednesdays and Sundays. You should check out the mix she got yesterday. We like the residual fibre after some of these veggies get juiced.

So Hot!!

Earlier we thought summer wouldn't come, then suddenly uncle sunshine decides to work overtime. It's been intolerable even lying down all day long with the fan blowing at us. The Chinese has this tradition of get rid of the heat and wetness in your body (去濕清熱）and the pre-pack ingredients for making the soup which will do the trick are in high demand. All you need is a packet of these, winter melon and some pork shank, add water and boil for a couple of hours. You are on your way to this magic potion which will take the excess water you store in your system to counter the summer heat.

A lot of people will buy and cook these without realizing what they are drinking. Since we don't get to drink the soup, we have to settle for just looking at the ingredients!!

This is a typical packet of these Chinese soup ingredients. It doesn't look remarkable in any shape or form.

But when you open it out and spread them apart, you actually get an interesting mix of different parts of different plants. (You might want to click and see a better quality picture with annotation of each ingredient.)

豬苓 Polyporus umbellatus - is a mushroom / fungus.

木棉花 Bombax ceiba - is the flower of a cotton tree.

澤瀉 Alismataceae  - is the stolon of a flowering plant grown in water.

燈芯 Juncales - a flowering plant.

蓮房 lotus seedpod.

果皮 - skin of a citrus fruit.
箄薢 - is the stolon of another plant.
白扁豆 White Hyacinth Bean
赤小豆 Vigna umbellata - is a annual vine legume with yellow flowers.
生熟薏米 Coix Seeds - see Answers.com for an excellent summary in English.

When it is all written out, it looks rather impressive and this is just a small sample of ingredients that go into Chinese medicinal soups.

Bed Time!!

Oasis in Hong Kong

Babies in the house

No!! These are not our babies. These are babies from the same birds which picked our ripest peaches last year, red whiskered bulbuls. All day long, the mother bird and father bird will make tireless trips to feed these babies. So after a few days they are almost ready to leave our house. Hope they come back again and bring more life to this house.



Note: You might need to select 480p resolution to see what's going on.

Graffiti on carriages in Singapore underground

You might not know the name Michael P. Fay. He was the American kid who got caned in Singapore and shot to fame as the US government tried literally to save his ass. The US government managed to reduce his pain by 1/3, he took 4 instead of 6 cane strokes and got a Wikipedia entry for that.

Foreigners never learn from this incident and all the "Caning" T-shirts sold in souvenir shops. The Singaporean government is trying to extradite a Brit for vandalizing an underground train with another Swiss who was already caught. Vandalism in Singapore can carry a fine of nearly £1,000 or three years in jail and three to eight strokes of a cane.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk/10261955.stm



The graffiti was so professionally done that initially the underground staff took no notice and thought it was officially sanctioned!!

X-ray Specs, spy pen camera and other gadgets

The 2-day university entrance examinations in China is underway and so far 6 groups of people have been arrested for selling exam-cheating devices.  Concealed walkie-talkie, embedded ear transmitters, spy pen camera, ruler with hidden display, etc, etc have been confiscated. With the end of the cold war, this is perhaps the biggest single drive for surveillance devices. And in order to catch potential cheats, the education authority employs security professionals to monitor exam hall covered with CCTVs, signal jamming devices and other anti-surveillance measures.

Cheating used to be a shameful act frowned upon by parents but in the twisted social values in China, parents are often condone such acts and even participate in the act by feeding answers to their sons inside the exam halls through the wireless devices. For an example of local coverage of the matter, see the link in Chinese below:

http://paper.wenweipo.com/2010/06/08/CH1006080001.htm

Of course, it's not just written examination where they cheated. Earlier this year, students cheated in marathon because the result formed part of the education credits.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/21/dozens-cheat-in-xiamen-ch_n_432444.html

But physically taking the exam even without the need to study maybe too much hard work for some, by paying a fee of RMB 8,000, you can guarantee yourself a qualifying score for university entrance. You might think that such services would only be available in some back-alley shop where you walk through a small door guarded by a guy with a turban. You slip a stash of cash into an unmarked envelop and pass to the old man behind the counter. He would tell you not to worry about the exam result. You are wrong!! You can find such services openly advertised on the web and you can even pay by credit cards. It is so institutionalized that such services are offered for a large range of exams.
http://www.jy87888.com/index.asp

In China, you can never be sure if what you are buying will actually work. In the desperate pursuit to succeed, you might fall prey to charlatans promising the world in exam results or sell you gadgets purport to do everything. But you have no legal recourse in the event that none of these work. Perhaps the only solution in China is to be born in a family with all the right connections.

Stop Press: Instead of enduring the mad struggle to get a university entrance, fake graduation certificates solve the problem. You can get those issued by Beijing University or Qinghua University for RMB 400 under your name and for whatever subject you care to name, even if the subject is not being offered by the university (a bit like the fake Cartier watches with features not found in the original). You can refer to the original article in Oriental Daily for more details and photos.
http://orientaldaily.on.cc/cnt/news/20100609/00176_005.html?pubdate=20100609

Noone can save you!!!

Hoover and Mop

A few years ago, auntie R sent us this card.

And now she added this video clip to the collection.

HK Art Fair 2010

Dionisio Gonzalez - Nova Aqua Gagosa II 2008 - a blend of photos from slumps and modern, geometric architecture

Yoshitomo Nara - Sleepless night 2007 - limited edition of 300

David Nash - not sure about the name of this, but doesn't it remind you of the Twin Towers in New York?

Yoshitomo Nara - Your Dog 2003

Familiar style from a gallery near Hollywood Road

This may give you the creeps!!

Cappuccino

This simple cup of cappuccino never fails to amaze us. From the different layers of colors, the complex coffee fragrance and even the way milk is frothed.

The other day, dad tried frothing a bottle of fresh milk and it came out completely flat. The first thought was the bottle of milk went bad. That tasted perfect. Creamy and cold, yum!! Only then did dad remember that full fat foams, though fuller in texture and flavor, are much much more difficult to make. Of course, he never had any problems using UHT full fat milk to froth before, since those are never very creamy.

You might be surprised to hear that the scorching hot steam coming out of the steam nozzle on an espresso machine is not an essential ingredient of the cappuccino milk foam. In fact, one can argue that the steam is detrimental to the formation and maintenance of the milk foam. The foam is formed by splashing milk and air together and the steam is just an agent in the process. The resulting water vapor or the condensed water are bad because the foam bubble wall becomes runny and prone to collapse if it is hot and has high water content. Hence frothing is best done with a lot of ice cold milk and the nozzle is only placed just below the milk surface.

Given that the hot steam is not an essential part of frothing but splashing the milk is, there are devices that splash milk mechanically, like the Nespresso Aeroccino. Since high temperature is bad for holding the bubbles, you can even have cold milk foam for cold drinks.

For those of you who want to know why full fat milk is tough to froth into foam, you might want to look up whey proteins, which are essential in stabilizing milk foams and ice crystals in ice creams. It also plays an essential part in body building.

泗益 Si Yik - Hong Kong Style French Toast

After the Eve Felder cooking class mum had in Tai Tam, mum and dad went to their favorite french toast "dai pai dong" in Stanley. 泗益 Si Yik occupies one of the most conspicuous position within Stanley being just off the round-about going into Stanley High Street. It's a tiny stall selling the whole selection of dishes that you would normally expect from a “cha chaan teng", 茶餐廳.
They ordered two cold "yuanyang", 鴛鴦 and the french toast.

The cold "yuanyang" came pretty much immediately. It was a nice treat after a long stroll through Stanley market.

The french toast, 2 pieces of bread filled with "Kaya" jam then coated with a layer of hand-whipped egg fried with a lot of grease, took a while (almost 15 minutes) to arrive. It no longer looked as fluffy as it used to be and when you actually put a piece in your mouth, the burst of different flavors was no longer there. Slightly disappointing, especially after mum raved about it to Eve Felder after the cooking class, telling her all about the french toast in this little stall in Stanley. Time to search for another place or just an off-day by the cook. Where's your favorite "sai dor see", french toast in Hong Kong? After all it is the first item in 40 Hong Kong foods that we can't live without in CNNgo, there must be better places around.