Foong Speaks Her Mind » Uncharacteristic Rave

I am at it again at 1am!

Foong — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 18:05:38 +0000

I don’t know why is it that I like to do this in the middle of the night or should I say, early in the morning? Perhaps it is the quiet silence of the night. The peace. And the only sounds I hear is the quiet mutterings of those deep in slumber.

And then my stomach starts growling.

I get hit by this sudden urge and craving.

I simply MUST have it.

The need is so strong.

So unrelenting.

I gave in.

And so…

I transformed this glob

Into this fabulous, rich, dense, thick, sweet and absolutely satisfying…

Five Minute Chocolate Cake served with ice cream!

Yes, you read right. It is the much talked about 5-minute chocolate cake and I finally tried it out! Want to have the recipe? Want to know how I made it? Wait lar. I’ll be posting it in my food blog soon.

All I can say is that I am SO GLAD I found this recipe. Now, I can make chocolate cakes within minutes without all the hassle and yes, the serving is just nice for one person. How good is that?

Yummy.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Lion as a pet, anyone?

Foong — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 01:08:04 +0000

Not that I am encouraging people to keep lions as pets illegally (or legally).

When my dog’s vet told me about how he used to have a pet lion and how it is the best pet he had ever had, I found it quite hard to imagine.

According to the vet, the lion, that he adopted from the circus when it was just a cub, was very affectionate and fiercely loyal. In his own words:

“It is better than having a dog or a cat. It is so intelligent and affectionate, it is hard to describe it,”

The vet had to give up the lion when it became too big (and too expensive) so now the lion is in Taiping Zoo. However, till now, whenever the vet goes over to visit, the lion would remember him and greet him, much like a dog greeting its owner.

Still, I could not imagine how such a wild animal could be affectionate and be better than dogs and cats. Until I saw Christian the Lion video clip which was making the rounds through emails and have received millions of hits in You Tube.

I am sure by now, anyone who’s connected to the internet would have seen the highly popular clip about Christian the Lion. It was really an amazing story and I am sure, many people are quite sceptical of the truth of the story and whether the lion really do remember his ‘adopted’ family or the video was pre-fabricated.

You haven’t seen it? Where have you been? Mars? Well, never mind. Anyway, here’s the Christian the Lion clip that has been making the rounds:

I don’t know about you but each time I watch it, it makes me want to cry! And no, apparently it is not pre-fabricated. It is not a Hollywood set-up. It is the real thing! The Today Show interviewed the two men in this video:

And if you want to know more about Christian the Lion, check out more about his story here.

This prove that animals have feelings and they will remember till the end those who protected and cared for them. I just don’t understand how some people could be so cruel to animals. People like that should be shot or better still, treated the same way they treat animals.

Now excuse me while I go bawl my eyes out. Watching those darn videos of Christian the Lion really do get to me, especially teamed with that song!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Trip to Strawberryland

Foong — Mon, 26 May 2008 05:00:08 +0000

We recently took a trip to the salad bowl and strawberryland of Malaysia, also known as Cameron Highlands for a short retreat and some fresh air. Instead of completely fresh air, we got a lot of fumes from all the jeeps and tour buses…**cough, gasp**…so don’t be fooled, all that greenery does not necessarily means fresh air when you are going from one tourist spot to another up there because the roads are full of tourist buses and those pollution-emitting jeeps, trucks and lorries.

But I digress.

I meant to talk about the trip there. The drive from Penang to Cameron Highlands was surprisingly short. About 4 hours or so. And no, we were not speeding! The first sight of Camerons was not the wonderful undulating green hills but dusty roads with rows of shophouses or vegetable farms or ugly bare hills being cleared for one purpose or another. Development has come to the serene green highlands and though necessary for the residents, it was not pretty.

The only places with loads of undulating green hills are the tea plantations.

Amongst the things I like about Camerons are the cool weather (no sweating like a pig even as we walk and go farm-hopping), the loads of strawberries, fresh vegetables and flowers.

I simply love strawberries for its wonderfully sweet smell and sourish taste. It is also good for health, I have written about the benefits of strawberries in my food blog recently.

Also, a great time to visit Cameron Highlands is during the weekends because of their amazing night market! They have a night market on Saturdays at Brinchang and a pasar tani on Sunday mornings. You can shop for flowers, strawberry stuff, food, vegetables and plants on those two days there. The prices are cheap and there are loads of varieties.

Everything strawberry is widely sold in Camerons

Flowers and strawberries are also easily found in Camerons at at the markets.

The Saturday night market and the Sunday pasar tani.

In the end, we ended up buying a lot of produce = vegetables, fruits and flowers. Till now, I still have some of the vegetables and fruits and flowers!

All in all, it was a fun Cuti-cuti Malaysia trip. The vegetables are fresh, the fruits are fresh, the air is sometimes fresh but definitely cooler and the sights are still better than the concrete jungle we live in. We will probably go back again. It is much more preferable than Genting anytime!

Fun rating: 7/10 (for those into nature and greenery)

Food rating: 8/10 (for those into fresh vegetables and fruits)

Getting there: It is better to drive than depend on the only bus service up there through the treacherous winding roads.

Weather: a cool reprieve from the heat in the city

Sights / tourist spots: Mostly vegetable farms, plant and fruit centres, flower gardens, tea plantations and bee aviaries.

Crappy confinement believes blearghh So, I had my baby. Thus, the long, long, long...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Having a big butt is good for you!

Foong — Thu, 22 May 2008 03:48:10 +0000

I have always had what most people would call ‘child-bearing hips’ or in straight layman’s terms, a big huge butt.

I had tried various means to…errr…reduce the size but to no avail. I am destined to have big child bearing hips.

So, when I come across this news, I was ecstatic.

Seems like having a big butt or child bearing hips means less chances of getting diabetes or…get this, it can ward off excessive weight gain.

Hah, so to all those who snigger and whispered and pointed and gossiped behind my back about the size of my bottom, the last laugh is on you!

I even have the news to prove this! You can watch it here:

Starting this new year with some… It is the end of another great year and the...
The things they never tell you about pregnancy Whenever someone talk about pregnancy in blogs or books or...
What we should be teaching our children Before I start, let me share with you the absolutely...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

If only everyone loved like this, divorce rates won’t be on the rise

Foong — Thu, 15 May 2008 08:48:50 +0000

Amidst the news of disaster and mayhem, accidents and horrendous crimes, moronic politicians and the heartless stupid government, it is really wonderful to find that the newspapers sometimes do carry good stories with wonderful endings.

I found this front-page story on The Sun today:

Till death do they part

TAIPEI: A Taiwan couple who were happily married for 66 years died on the same day, becoming the envy of friends and neighbours who thought it was the perfect ending to an ideal marriage.

Wang Wei-chen, 97, and his wife Wang Lin-hsueh, 87, lived in Kaohsiung,south Taiwan, and had been married for 66 years, the Merit Times said.

Recently, Wang Lin-hsueh fell ill and was hospitalised. At 4.30pm on May 7, she died in the hospital, the paper quoted her son Tung-hsin as saying.

“We transported my mother’s remains to a funeral parlour to prepare for her funeral.

As soon as we arrived at the funeral parlour, I received a phone call from family members
saying my father, who had also been ill, had died in his sleep at home,” he said.

“We were shocked because we had not told my father that mom had died. But during my mother’s last days, dad seemed to know that she was dying and insisted on going to hospital to visit mom, but we did not allow him because of his health.

“We would rather think that father died because he did not want mother to go alone, but wanted to keep her company.” Wang Ling-ying, the couple’s daughter, said her parents were deeply in love with each other.

“They were always together, tending flowers in the garden or listening to classical music at home. Father liked to go mountain climbing and sometimes took mother along or took her on overseas sightseeing trips. When father was 90, he was still taking mom on motorbike joy rides,” she said. – dpa

Sigh…isn’t that just utterly romantic? They were married for 66 years which is no mean feat what with divorce being one of the most common solution to disputes in marriages nowadays. It just makes me go all soft and teary-eyed imagining how the husband could somehow sense that his wife had passed on and so, he too went along to keep her company.

That is what marriage is supposed to be about. It is about sharing and caring and yes, even the disagreements and ugly moments and sticking together making life hell wonderful for each other till the very end. No, till the very end does not mean shooting your partner or strangling him/her to death.

Coming from a broken family myself and seeing couples divorce over the most trivial of matters I had often wondered if there is any meaning to ’till death do us part’ or whether the term ’soul mate’ actually mean anything. It is stories like this that shows that sometimes, love do prevails above all.

That’s why I feel that women should have their own income // Because it will never do for us to leave...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

OMG! My old blog has a PR 5!

Foong — Tue, 13 May 2008 07:16:35 +0000

I am flabbergasted and shocked beyond words.

I mean I barely even did a lot of linking in my old blog (penangviews.blogspot.com) and only used it for about a month plus before moving it all to here and the new Penang Views and News and suddenly, I found out that it has a PR 5!

WOW. That is even higher than some..err…auntie…heh heh heh…**does a gleeful dance**

Now, don’t ask me how I did it. For the life of me, I am clueless! I know nothing about building PR and links and etc so I honestly, truthfully, cross my heart and hope to die, do not know.

Okay, elation and joyous dancing and baying to the moon aside…now is the most difficult decision in my life..ok, ok, don’t want to exaggerate la, now got a difficult decision to make.

Should I continue to just leave the blog alone and let it languish? Or should I make full use of it and continue blogging there too? Any suggestions anyone?

Also, any ideas from any pro-bloggers on how that old blog manage to get a PR 5 without me even trying to get it? While this blog is still ‘No PageRank is available’.

Sigh…this is all still way above my head….

Stop spamming my blog already!! I barely have time to update this blog nowadays due...
Since I already have this blog, might as well use it to record my life // When I first started this blog, it was to...
Things in my mind that I want to blog about… They say when you have the will, there’s a way...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Now you don’t have to starve or lift a single finger to lose weight!

Foong — Mon, 05 May 2008 23:44:26 +0000

To all those struggling to lose the extra flab, well, don’t.

I mean, don’t struggle.

Let it happen because it seems researchers / scientists in Australia have found a way to increase metabolism for weight loss by manipulating the fat cells.

I don’t know about you but it sounded darn gross to me ‘manipulating the fat cells’…it made me think of a doctor poking some sorta needle into my many folds of extra flesh and twisting it around to ‘manipulate the fat cells’ within.

Ugghhh…sounds painful and scary. Anyway, after further reading, I realised it doesn’t involve needles but the doctors need only ‘interfere with the renin-angiotensin system to induce selective loss of fat mass’.

Renin-whatcrap system you ask?

Heck beats me.

I’m not a doctor and even this system thingy left me wondering if it is another torturous device, perhaps a tube like the one used for liposuction? So, I continued reading this piece of news which becomes even more littered with big words small people like me could barely comprehend.

After reading through the piece a few times, (nope, I don’t have ADD, it is just so hard to concentrate when the article is full of scientific terms which does not interest me in the least!) I finally realised that they meant that you could take hypertension medication to lose weight! At least that’s what it said:

“ACE inhibitor and Angiotensin Receptor Blocker (ARB) drugs are already widely available to treat hypertension and have been found to have this same effect on fat and glucose metabolism, but many people using these drugs may not have noticed any significant weight loss because their lean body mass could have increased.

Wow, talk about two-in-one. Control your hypertension while at the same time, lose weight.

HAH, slimming centres eat your hearts you! People can just pop hypertension-controlling pills and lose weight. No need for slim wraps or whateveritis you do in slimming centres. I wonder what type of beauty salon equipments those centres uses anyway…

Oh, yeah. I forgot to mention that this is only in testing stage ya. So, please don’t go rushing to the nearest pharmacy to get the ARB watchamacallit drugs just yet. Don’t throw out your plus size clothes either. Let the scientists do their work first.

After all, it is only proven in rats now but not on humans yet. Ya, ya, I know many of you are rats anyway but I think they meant the real rats, you know, the small furry, squeeky kind?

If you are not convinced or confused, well, go and read the article yourself la.

Just click on this: Scientists Discover Way to Increase Metabolism For Weight Loss

Starting this new year with some… It is the end of another great year and the...
No, I have not abandoned this blog but just earning money online // And obviously, I am still alive and kicking! I’ve...
The things they never tell you about pregnancy Whenever someone talk about pregnancy in blogs or books or...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

My HTC Touch

Foong — Sun, 04 May 2008 00:09:33 +0000

I’ve been using my new HTC Touch for a few weeks already and decided to do a review of it in case anyone else is looking for a brand new PDA phone.

It is a pretty good phone and user-friendly. It runs of a Windows mobile platform which makes it easier for those used to Windows. It is small and light-weight, at 112g with battery. It is also very slim and not as bulky as other PDA phones. So, it has this elegant and slim look.

The memory is ROM 256MB and SDRAM 128MB DDR. However the processor runs at only 200MHz. It uses the micro-SD memory card.

So, it could be a tad slow. It would have been better if the processor runs at 400MHz. What I love the most about this phone is the TouchFlo system which means a swipe of the thumb and you can go from one interface to another. In short, you can go to the music, photos and videos list, the top nine contacts list and email/sms/calendar list with a swipe.

It also has Wifi, Bluetooth and GSM, GPRS, EDGE. It also has a serviceable 2.0megapixel camera.

A sample picture taken by my HTC Touch

Pros: Ease of use, elegant look, has all basic functions of a PDA phone, reasonably priced for a new PDA phone at RM1,688, has quite a lot of functions from watching video clips to taking pictures to checking emails to creating word documents.

Cons: a little slow, no 3-G, no GPS.

Battery: Based on average usage of three to four calls a day, taking pictures and videos, sending SMS, going on Wifi to check emails, using Edge to check emails, using bluetooth to transfer files – it can last one day. However, if the Wifi, bluetooth and Edge was not used and the phone was left on overnight, it can last for two days tops. A spare battery is definitely needed if you are a heavy phone user and you are always on the go.

I would recommend this phone if you are looking for a reasonably priced basic PDA phone.

Rating: 7 /10

No, it is not public property It is so VERY, VERY annoying when…. People reach out...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Foong becomes sentimental

Foong — Sat, 03 May 2008 00:51:33 +0000

The Last Unicorn – a review

I watched this movie (cartoon) when I was very small and I remember that I even have a video tape of this show. I had a copy of the ebook too but somehow it got lost when I formatted my PC!

What I love most about this show is the touching moments and the scores. This particular haunting theme song for the show has remained in my memories.

The story is about the last unicorn, Amalthea, who starts a journey to search for others like her. In her journey she was captured by a witch but was later rescued by a young magician who then travels with her.

Then along come Prince Lir, and as the enemy, the Red Bull, detects Amalthea and threatens to capture her too, the magician turned her into human. The group then continue with their quest to search for the other unicorns who were under captive of the Red Bull.

As with all romances, Prince Lir and Amalthea fell in love. However, the ending is not the conventional ending as it is both a happy and sad ending.

They found the other unicorns and released them but Amalthea was transformed back into a unicorn. The love between her and Prince Lir was not meant to be after all.

The movie is based on The Last Unicorn book by Peter S. Beagle. It was adapted into an animated film in 1982.

Rating: 9/10 (call me a romantic but I still love it as ever before!)

Now, it is very difficult to get copies of this movie except through Ebay or Amazon. It is the same with the book.

Sigh, they just don’t make much movies / write books like these anymore.

You can get The Last Unicorn products here:

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

We need some laughter in our lives

Foong — Fri, 02 May 2008 06:41:04 +0000

There is nothing more true and accurate than the adage ‘Laughter is the best medicine’.

Setting up this blog and the Penang Views and News blog and also trying to meet deadlines both my day job and my freelance work, has gotten me so tied up in stress that I had severe migraines.

So, instead of relying on panadols and painkillers, I did the next best thing. I went in search of laughter and found this:

Of course, it was equally laughter-inducing to make my little toddler laugh.

Don’t you think laughing babies are the most adorable, cutest thing ever?

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.