The C.N.Y – Cow New Year

It’s the Moo Moo year, let’s kill more cows for our desires on steak!

I’m greedy this year so I’ll celebrate CNY in Melbourne and Malaysia, since I dislike the first day of CNY. Every year, there are only two scenarios, first, relatives will come visit and disturb me when I was in my dreamland early in the morning, then I’d wake up with a sleepy look and they’ll look at me and laugh while greeting me ‘Morning, Piggy’. Scenario two will be, my mum waking me up extremely early to visit my great grand mother from my mum’s side and I’ll be extremely tired for the rest of my day, all the very nice foods doesn't seem so nice after that.

Nowadays, first and second day of New Year are usually bored back in my hometown after they ban fireworks in Malaysia, without fireworks flying all over the town, the town seems like too dumb for a person to feel spirited for the festive – most shops and shopping centers are closed until the third day of New Year, relatives visit you and take up all the space in your house (bed, sofas, teles’, PCs’, etc), gamble friends set up tiny gambling den and try to win all the monies from your red-packets and the roads are so quiet with a few cars that make you feel that you shouldn’t be out on the road but somewhere else fighting to win somebody else’s red-packet.

So I decided to skip the first 2 days and happily have a dinner with my family when I get back on the 28th. This decision doesn’t make me feel extremely good though since I still have to come back to office today to finish up everything I have to do for my 6 weeks of holiday – I managed to clear out my last task this morning and will be happily enjoying my rest of the day in the office chilling around, it’s CNY after all.

Australia Day falls on the 26 January and Aussies don’t celebrate CNY, my CNY holiday was then compensated from the Australia Day Holiday on the 26th so it’s all good, if not I’ll make a third scenario soon. This year I feel I’ve started off CNY pretty happily, although the festival I went wasn’t that fun but it did made me feel that its CNY, and also, on the very same night, I finally join my housemate to another KTV session again - it’s been such a long time since the last time I joined him and had that much of fun.

Other than that, on CNY itself, I had a great time practicing my cooking skill. As usual, my family friends here, except for Nick and Warren since they are back in Malaysia this time. We made a great reunion feast…

The extremely nice Poh Piah (One of the Malaysian food) filled with fresh minced prawns, minced pork and etc… The preparation for it took like a few hours!

Michelle helping out to roll and wrap up the ingredients into ‘Poh Piah’ – looks professional until I tempted her to make funny shapes, she ended up making large shanghai dumpling instead of Poh Piah - totally lost her direction.

These are the ingredients… not easy to make them at all - there are so much work like peeling off the prawn’s shells, chopping up onions and many more…

After all the trouble, we still have to look out to make sure it’s fried into gold brownish color so it’ll be crispy and not burnt…

As for me, I think fish for CNY is a ‘must’ thing to have, so I bought a big fresh Barramundi which I made it in two different ways…

The Cantonese Steam Barra… By Me!

And the Fried Barra with Soy Sauce… By Me Again!

Then we had the mushroom Chicken that was marinated for two days! The Chicken has a strong mushy taste, and the mushroom is sooO nice!

Other than that, we had Cashew Prawns, heaps of Marinated Fried Chicken, Yellow Bean Soup with Pork Spare Ribs, Steam and fried Vegetables with Garlic. They are all so delicious that I couldn’t resist not eating more and I ended up with a bloated tummy the next day, all good for a New Year start!

Guess what!? 1 more day to go!!!!!

CNY Festival

CNY Celebration near my house in Box Hill! It's 人山人海！

天公保佑， 中马票！



恭喜发财，红包拿来！

My li'l Spur

Approximately 140 days ago, I placed a countdown for the moment I put my foot on the ‘Kiasu’ land. This countdown has been here for so long that it has become part of the ornamental in this page. To speak the truth, I haven’t been seeing it since the very first time I placed it in here, never will I think that it will make me excited by looking at it, like now! I’m so going to take my holiday!!

I’ll be away from Melbourne at this period of time - 28/01/09 to 13/03/09 which also mean that I won’t be updating this blog since I’ll be overly excited to type, neither do I have the time to do it and I’m so going to eat Bak Kut Teh everywhere!!! Right now, I can imagine the savory satisfaction when I first place the Bak Kut Teh into my mouth after months and days of cravings and you know, the taste have to be from that particular shop that you ate ever since young, how the pork melt in the mouth... etc!!

Geeezz, I really can’t sit still right now! Behold!! 5 more days~!~!

Have a good time everyone and wish me happy holidays!! Hehe~

Mount Dandenong

Philip got a friend from Kuching who came to Melbourne for holiday and he too, owns a d-slr camera, name Daniel Tok. We call him Ah Tok, and he invited us to a short trip to Mt Dendenong with her daughter Alysha.

Alysha is 3 years old and she’s a little bit funny. She doesn’t like to take photos and if she realized that someone is shooting her secretly, she’ll cover her face but if someone forced her to take one, she’ll make weird faces and he will have to take a few in order to get a good one like this…

Of course, being the uncle of three shouldn’t have problem handling just one and aside from that, I love kids and am really good at dealing with them.

Apart from taking her pictures, she is always happily munching her teevee snacks~

We arrived at Mount Dandenong during arvo, decided to have our lunch in this restaurant call Pie in the Sky, a pretty famous place for freshly baked pies. I’m not sure how famous or fresh their pies are, but they did win a few awards for its pie. One of the dishes that won a gold medal is the ‘pie in the sky’ where they serve the pie together in the soup.

Pie in the Sky – Beef & Guinness flavor – Chunky beef and potato cooked in Guinness beer

I picked the beef and Guinness flavor and the taste is really good, I’m not a pie person so I can’t say much about it. But I had a try on Philip’s 'Pie in the Sky' with Steak and Kidney fanor (Chunky beef, lambs kidney and carrots), the lamb kidney stinks badly and totally not my kind of food. Philip regretted ordering it, maybe it’s for extreme lamb lovers only.

These are the varieties available – somehow it’s attractive to put it this way, I feel like tasting all of them! Obviously Steak & Mushroom must be really nice compared to the rest~

From the take-away menu board - it shows the types of pie they sell and favor that won medal are tagged with the word gold or silver on the side so that customer knows which the better ones are. Surprisingly, the Steak & Kidney has silver tagged!

This is like the third time I’ve been to this restaurant, and I believe it’s always packed with crowds during public holidays or weekends. I couldn’t remember what I had last 2 times when I was here but it didn’t leave me with any bad impression so it’s all good…

Other than pies, cakes are the other options which I have never tried before and according to the menu, they baked the cakes as well!

Alysha waiting for food~

Their bread toast is so blardy delicious that I can still remember its taste even now! I know it’s just ham, cheese and bread but I just like the way it’s made – crispy outside, soft inside, a little salty taste from the cheese and a little juicy from the ham! Yummy!! A very good starter~

We gobbled up our meals pretty fast and Alysha started gulping down her cold vanilla milk shake and become a happy girl!

Oh yeah and I like their cozy interior design with lots of portraits hanging on the wall. After we were done with our meal, we went to walk around the street and I realized this place is like a kid’s paradise! This is what we found along the street…

If you get what I mean, don’t bring your kids there if you want to save money! I’m surprise Alysha didn’t even request for a single thing from her dad Tok, maybe she is still too young to go there and she is very obedient throughout the whole trip. Other than requesting for an ice cream and vanilla milk shake, she is pretty low profile!

Then just 10 minutes drive away from the town, at the highest point of Mount Dandenong – the place where one can see the whole of Melbourne City, the night view is excellent for a romantic date! But it’ll be damn boring to drive all the way up there at night, all the feel might have gone after the long drive up the mountain~

At this highest point, there’re some attractions like sculptures for tourist like me and some other interesting activities like this one…

You can find curious kids trying to squeeze the nipples of this ‘whatever it’s called’ statue.

And Alysha found her lover and pushing her rival away!



Then I managed to find a drain and turn it into a river!



Alysha took up her guts and go against the secret garden rule!



Not forgetting this, another piece of my work~ and…



This! Daniel found his new nest!

After the photo taking session, we drove another 15 minutes to this restaurant call Miss Marples.

I supposed this restaurant opens from breakfast until high tea, and it’s definitely more famous than Pie in the Sky since we waited 90 minutes to get our seats! So we went around the area for a walk and took some interesting pictures…

Spot the Buddha!





The Miniature world



Happy Friend Alysha



Cool Doggies!

After the long wait, I almost lost the mood to eat anything but I guess the crowd never lies.

The restaurant is extremely homey and comfortable with the warm orange lights and retro pictures hanging on the walls. The ambiance is perfect and so is the food!

I’ll highly recommend this, best scones ever served with Butter and Jam! I can’t explain, try it and you’ll understand what I mean~

We also had salad, apple strudel and crispy chicken fingers. Then we left with satisfaction!

Apparently, I was supposed to be on Lemon Detox that very first day so these are all the reasons I failed badly – how can anyone resist such food?

Between, another random shot I took when I was on my way home… Cool? To view all my photos on flickr, simply click on any of the photos then click on my photostream.

Damn, I’m so hungry now~