My Passion, My Life v2.0

When the going gets tough, the tough gets going.

When the exams get tougher, the hungrier I get. In the midst of exam preparation, I escaped back all the way to Penang and here I am again, bringing to you the very best of Penang food.

Last edition of my food galore featured the Dim Sum feast in Ipoh. How about some steamboat dinner this time?

It has becoming more and more trendy with steamboat restaurants everywhere promoting the eat-all-you-can style. Not for this case, this unique restaurant brings you back to the old-school style of the traditional steamboat.

Zi Wei Yuan Steamboat Restaurant is the name. From my knowledge, steamboat is actually a local cuisine of the native of Fuzhou clan. It can be seen here that the steamboat itself is not power by gas stove, instead the traditional charcoal method is being utilized. This actually makes the soup more tasty and brings out the real taste of steamboat by convention (if you get what I mean here). Try cooking for yourself by using gas stove and compare it by cooking similar food by using charcoal powered stove… you’ll probably understand the art of charcoal fire.

Located in the heart of the Butterworth, Zi Wei Yuan Steamboat is just blocks away from Jalan Ong Yi How (near Chung Ling Butterworth) and is a sight not to be missed in the area of Raja Uda. According to the locals, this shop is owned and runned by a Singaporean and has been successful since day 1 till today!

The secret of this sumptuos steamboat lies beneath the soup itself. The steamboat is served with the special fish soup that has been cooked to perfection with a lil’ taste of milky sour. If you could imagine the tasty has some similarity to the Fish Head Bee Hoon sold in the southern Peninsula whereby the soup is served with a little bit of milk too. Furthermore, the soup here at Zi Wei Yuan comes with the freshest of fish fillet.

More and more dishes… Yeah I never fail to have extra ordered my food… Extra? There are usually NO leftovers from me…  HEHE

Fret not, although the menu is purely in Chinese, illiterate people like me still manage to order my set of food. You just need to point here and there and speak a lil bit of Hokkien…

This restaurant has a kinda simple type of menu, but then the list of food that is actually being served is definitely more than the ones that has been listed. For further add-ons, you will probably need some recommendation from the waiters. For my dinner trip, we chose the set menu which is around RM180 for 6 pax.

Less elaboration this time around. The food is far too tantalizing and I bet it beats the rest of the eat-all-you-can steamboat F-L-A-T . Not to mention Yuen Steamboat at Sunway (PJ) or Golden Gate Steamboat in Pulau Tikus (Penang), Zi Wei Yuan is a class above the rest. Don’t believe me? Google for yourself and read the rest of the food lovers review.

Yeah, apparently I’m still in the midst of examination but heck I can’t refrain myself from blogging about this food post. It all happened during my study week (the week was supposed for students to prepare for examination) when I travelled back to Penang from KL for my Mom’s birthday celebration.

The journey from KL to Penang took me around 3.5 hours and a stopover is almost inevitable to keep me fresh and focussed for this gruelling 360km journey. This time around, since I left KL around 6am, I already had a clear plan in mind - stopover at Ipoh for Dim Sum breakfast!~~~

I’ve got a few friends from Ipoh and I also made some googling for famous Dim Sum restaurants recommendable in Ipoh. To my surprise, there’s really two really-super-famous restaurants that even have fans dying for their food. These people actually debated and argued in several blog comments column defending for these restaurants.

It’s Ming Court Hong Kong Dim Sum Restaurant versus Foh San Dim Sum Restaurant. Even some food lovers would planned their trip to go for one restaurant for a certain food and proceed to the other restaurant for other bite of flavour. Initially, I did planned to do the same as well.

From my judgement, I decided to go for Ming Court Dim Sum house for this time around. When I reached there, only do I realized that I’ve been there before years back with my cousins and other relatives. Heck it was too lazy to change my route and of course what’s more when I already found a super nice car park just in front of the restaurant.

Click here to check the rest of the sumptuous Dim Sum galore

My Passion, My Life v2.0 is officially taking a break from today until 24th of November.

Desmond-t is facing a gruelling exam schedule which begins 5th November until 24th November.

For the time being, this v2.0 blog is taking a time off and please come back again once I am done with my exams and finish fixing the stupid RSS feed error on this blog.

Wish me luck for my final exams…

p/s: Lecturers are giving no mercy for Final Year students, wtf!

Recently, fuel prices began to drop as our ever-hopeful government announced their second fuel price from. First was from RM2.70 to RM2.55 and followed by RM2.55 to RM2.30 for RON97 petrol. It was never too low for me, but not for the others I guess. Judging from the traffic flow in KL, the congestion did decreased during the Raya festivities but for now, it is slowly jamming up once again.

More and more cars on the roads as time passes by. People are just getting richer, I presume. Back in the time when I was in the land Down Under, where fuel prices were so-freaking-high, people resorted to cycle whenever they can.

Which means, they do carry bicycles together with their car. They’d stop, park their cars… and cycle.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last weekend, ShiMikY da man was in town to settle his chores and replenish his Astro stocks. That’s what he said but for me, that is just his lousy reason to stop by KL to whack some tantalizing food. The day after our Look Out Point outing, we’re all set for a breakfast hunt at Klang.

The only thing that can drag my lazy bump to wake up so early on Sundays - food, nice food to be precise. I bet these people are very much like me. Wah lao eh! Sunday morning no need sleep ah! All wake up so early come rebut with me!

Drooling already? Click HERE to check out the delicacies!

Many of you would have heard of this place. Yes, desmond-t is going to bring to you his version of Look Out Point, Hulu Langat. Do expect nice KL views, attractions and food galore from this place. A perfect hangout place, for the young and old. Last Saturday it is, a perfect time to go to The Look Out Point in the night as it rained cats and dogs in the evening. Immediately, the skies emerged as clear as it is after several spells of hazy atmosphere. What a time for a drive to this hillside hangout place.

Jianz just bought a new digital camera, so this outing’s photos were taken from his brand new Olympus 850 SW camera. With 8MP and shock proof and 3-meters waterproof camera, he is still learning to fully utilize his camera. This is the best result of the night, taken by ShiMikY over the night mode. Not bad for me, at least.

More review on Look Out Point, food, scenes here!

This edition of travelogue brings you to another adventurous exploration, The Taman Negara Pahang or also known as The National Park, Pahang, West Malaysia.

It is widely known as one of the oldest, of not the oldest rainforest in the world (eh, my guide argues it is even older than the Amazon Rainforest, OK?)

My 3D2N trip depends very much on my two jungle guides, very much that we simply agree to whatever they said. If any of us found to be protesting against them, who knows they’d left us in the middle of no man’s land LOL Just kidding.

I’m sure you’ll be very eager to know how I actually planned my trip, just in case you’re planning yours in time to come. Make it simple, I depart from University of Malaya, KL and drove myself all the way to the Sungai Tembeling Jetty Entrance, Jerantut, Pahang.

You’d be killing me by now. Bear with me, for sure I’ll elaborate more about my commotion during my rough ride on the way there.

As you know, I drove there and no way I’m gonna have my hands on the camera. Neither do my friends, all just numb inside my car, some half asleep, some half dreaming, some half sesat.

From KL, we stopped by Mentakab for breakfast and a short visit to my coursemate’s house before we began the gruelling 2 hrs++ drive from Mentakab to Jerantut. Distance is around 150km, but the journey took us 2hrs plus! Winding road, hill slopes and not forgetting feases or cow dung in the middle of the road. For god sake, I was driving, not to avoid pot holes but shit holes! I bet it’s so called the natural toilet for the cows and goats.

Read the rest of this entry »

Years after years Desmond-t yearned to explore The Taman Negara Pahang, he made it at last!

Adventure trip, back to the nature it was.

A picturesque view from the tree top at the world’s longest Canopy Walk.

Stay tuned for more updates coming to you soon!

For one moment, I’m back in Penang.

Within a blink of an eye, I turned 23.

The moment after that, I found myself back in KL, back to reality.

It has been a fattening trip and filled with assignments and “money-risking” trip as well.

Fattening - food all over, plus mom’s delicious home cooked food. Plus vegetarian feast!

Assignments - enough said, no one is interested that I’ve found my lecturer’s answer in the web!

Money risking - Snooker with lucky balls and Texas Hold’em at home, all kaki judi betul!

and this was the night I turned 23, in an old school Church Street Bar.

More funny and edited pictures at Eve’s Apple4today, with special effects by Mr. Kenny Ng.

 I’m one lucky dude to have all my bosom buddies back in Penang to celebrate with me all these years. If you guys still remember last year at Gurney Place and the year before at Bukit Genting.

Read the rest of Desmond-t turning 23

It has been plain sailing in Penang, with only assignments to worry about.

It is timely for me to take some breather and to blog.

SInce it has been plain and dull, desmond-t decides to give you some twists he has extracted from some funny links. Theme of the day is all about exams.

Here you go… People tend to get super ultra mega creative when it comes to tedious exam questions.

Why not just make it simpler… and humorous?!

I bet many of you may have seen this. “Expand” has numerous meaning right? Pretty unfair for the lecturer to have give him a big Wrong, well at least half mark for his creativity!

He changed the whole question! This guy is out of his mind… He integrated batman into Bruce Wayne.

Wakakaka…there is no limit for answers!

Behold, more laughters ahead! Click here to check out the ultimate laughter at the end of this entry!