Fishing @ Batu Gajah...

The huge lake we fished

On an early Saturday morning, my cousin (Stan Lee) MSN me asking whether we're doing any fishing since I'm back to Ipoh? I was thinking why not since it's a Saturday and none of my relatives are back for the CNY celebration and it has been awhile since my rod has seen any action....I think the last was early 2008. Wow! Almost a year already....

Stan Lee came over to pick me up around 10am and we went to a coffeeshop nearby my house at Canning Garden to have breakfast. I was shocked to see the coffeeshop packed! Then it came to me...long holidays for the Chinese New Year break... Managed to get a seat after a minute of waiting...yea...considered lucky...We had wan tan mee and egg custards! Yummy!

Then we're off...it took us nearly 40 minutes to reach our destination...and for Ipoh standard... it's really far away. Well it's Batu Gajah after all, a town of its own and nearest landmark I can recall is Clearwater Sanctuary. We had to pass through lots of rubber and oil palm plantation estates and I was impressed with the road pavements that has been done here as it's all brand new FREEWAY quality roads.

I was amazed with the number of ponds you can see going through the FREEWAY and when we arrived, the lake we're supposed to fish is just beside the FREEWAY. Wow...talk about convenience for casual fishing. About 50 metres odd from the lake is the Batu Gajah train station and seriously I didn't even know that there is any train station at Batu Gajah at all. We quickly alighted and prepare our equipments for fishing.

Stan Lee with his Tilapia

Stan Lee had 3 standard size rods and with another 12 feet extendable rod for reaching hard to get places. Talk about "kiasu"...hahahhaa...while i had 2 standard size rods. Anyways I also do believe with a wild lake such as this, the more rods, the better chances. By the way, the lake is quite clear with lots of storks as well. Shows that is a good fishing ground especially since these birds likes fish for food. We were only using earthworms as baits and we rigged 3 with float while another 2 for bottom fishing.

Stan Lee even used a stick and converted it to a fishing pole. Ancient fishing style.....before fishing rods was invented and he caught lots of small fishes ranging from 3 inches to palm sized. Not sure what fishes they were with yellowish body with black stripes and a black dot near its tail. Looks like from the chiclid family type of fish which is a family for our local tilapias. After about an hour 1 of Stan Lee's float has a nibble and he quickly strike...quite a fight there with light tackle....got it up and to our surprise a beautiful 1 foot Tilapia....not bad for a wild pond thats beside the FREEWAY as usually these kind of places would be overfished.

Yours truly with a Haruan/Snakehead

Another 30 minutes or so, my bottom fishing tackle got a strong jerk and luckily my rod did not went into the lake....would be a nightmare then....I quickly rushed over and had a quick strike and felt nothing...probably the hook didn't managed to latch itself? As I reel in I felt there was some resistance...more of like pulling in water feeds feeling. Hope begins to arise and then when it was up, I was happy to see a 1.5 foot Haruan/Snakehead. It's been awhile since I caught any fish at these wild places and such a good sized fish is even rare.

After my fish there were no more actions but Stan Lee still manages to catch those weird small sized fishes. We left around 4.15pm as it's getting too hot ( I actually got sun burnt on my neck, face and hands! ) and also very hungry as we did not pack lunch. On the way back, Stan Lee decided to use the highway from Simpang Pulai to Ipoh and to our surprised we were caught in a massive jam. We were stuck all the way 2 km from the Ipoh toll :(

All in all, was a wonderful trip and thanks to Stan Lee....I renew my faith in fishing again.

Gong Xi Fa Cai!

Wishing Everyone a Happy and Prosperous New Year!

May the year of the OX brings all with abundace of love, beauty, youth, fortune, wealth, health & longevity!

GONG XI FA CAI!!

Company Dinner @ Red Box, The Gardens Mid Valley City...

On 16th January 2009, our company decided to host our company annual dinner at Red Box. Seriously? Red Box? Company dinner in January?? Yupz! You heard that right! The reason is that our company financial closes on 31 January of every year....therefore January is our year end! Why Red Box? I was still puzzling as it's a location for karaoke....not everyone sings right?

Anyways it was supposed to start at 6pm but with typical Friday evening and location at Mid Valley City...we were all late! The earliest was already there earlier as they were having 'appointments' over at the location as well and the latest came in about 8 something! GOSH! See how bad the traffic is on Friday evening at KL?

Once about 1/3 of the group were in which is about 7pm already, we couldn't wait for the rest and just went to grab our meals....after all it's buffett style...FIFO (First In, First Out) right? hahahaha....Quite a normal meal they serve, mostly local delicacies (something more of economy rice style) apart from oyster & sushi (both which is not fresh!), salad bar & some desserts and fruits which i dare not to try....

The room that they provided can easily fit more than 40 person easily as we had 35 pax and there is still lots of space around....A decently decorated room with sofas, a couple of plasma tvs, a projector screen for Nintendo Wii Console & another projector screen for Karaoke and it comes with a private toilet as well!

Red Box actually provided an in house game of using chopstick to carry marbles/stars to a destination as well as a guessing game.....really funny...as each individual who tries 2 emulate words that are written on a sheet of paper especially on color...

our decorated lobby

nice sofa seats

buffett style dinner

eating in the dark

our main singer

chopsticks on marbles

guessing game

lots of freebies

my prize!

Overall it was fun as I managed to get some nice presents .... it was actually better than the year before party where it was held on a crappy place :P No complaints apart from the food though as it's just not fresh and really not worth it...per head count its about RM100++ from what I heard...

Toast Box

A backdated blog indeed....hahaha...well it was a weekend and yea...am working...as i am attending a roadshow at mid valley (property fair if I remember correctly). Tried to grab a quick breakfast and most of the shops arount ain't open. Therefore might as well try TOAST BOX since it's open and I've yet to try before. Heard that it was quite good.

Therefore went there and was amazed that during 9.30am on a Saturday morning, it's near packed and have to queue up before I can even order. I guess maybe it has something to do with self service? Once reach the counter, ordered the French Toast Set and the Standard Toast Set. Each set comes with a drink and 2 half boiled eggs costing RM6.90 per set not inclusive of service charge as well as government tax.

Queue for food

Long Queue

Diluted Coffee

Half boiled egg thats hard boiled!

Standard Toast

French Toast

Egg and drinks was served instantly while the toast have to wait about 2 minutes. The egg was not bad but it's more hard boild than half boiled. The coffee was actually below average only. It's like drinking a very diluted coffee. As for the toast breads, the standard was quite good with kaya and butter while the french toast is simply horrible. It has a certain pungent smell to it and tasted very weird. At first I thought was the butter but the standard toast has butter as well. Therefore it's concluded the cooking oil used to make the french toast that makes it pungent smell (really not a recommendation to try at all).

Overall it's OK for a quick bite but I think Mc Donalds would have been a better choice especially with that price and the quality of food thats being served. By the way, the outlet I tried was at Mid Valley Megamall North Court.

Royal China Restaurant @ Jalan Ampang

It was 2 days before Christmas of 2008 and my boss decided to treat us LUNCH after our HOD meeting. Royal China Restaurant @ Jalan Ampang was decided to be the venue as it's quite close to our office and since Tim Sum is in all our mind....YummY! Moreover a nice and expensive lunch for the HOD should be able to calm our nerves and worth our while since we all just got "shot" all over our body from the directors.

I guess for the next HOD meeting, I really need to prepare an armour much stronger than Kevlar....any ideas? Anyways back to this yummy feast...Royal China Restaurant is part of Tai Thong Group of Restaurants and they are famous for their Chinese Delicacies especially Tim Sum.

Fishball

Steam Pork Bun

prawn dumpling

"siew mai"

"loh bak kou"

Steam Prawn Dumpling

"Chee Cheong Fun"

Dumpling

"Char Koay"

Noodle with sauce

Duck + "char siew" + "siew yuk"

Red Bean Bun

"tow foo fa"

The food that's good are the duck dish with pork (char siew + siew yuk), fishball, prawn dumpling, "siew mai" & the noodle as it's freshly cooked from the oven and you can literally taste the freshness of the meat! yea...i'm a meat lover! :P

The rest was average only as it's nothing special and from my point of view the worst is the '"tow foo fa" as it's not smooth and it has some strange smell to it :( For a table of 7 people, the bill came out to be almost RM250! I guess if we're to come again for tim sum, it must be on company pay roll as it's quite a heavy price unless those that have too much money and do not know where to spend on. I rather go back Ipoh to eat as it's much better and you can even eat till ur dead with that kind of price tag!

My Coming Birthday Wishlist....:P

Nikon D90

Yeay! My birthday is coming soon.....Hope 2009 would be a great year for me to recieve lots of pressies....hahahha...really sounds greedy :P I guess time really flies huh? Another year has already past and my birthday coming soon....2 months and 3 days to be exact....

APPLE MAC BOOK

So all of you readers out there; I'm helping you to save your time as well as saving your brain cells by showing you the things I want for my Birthday this year...seriously...I have been in this situation whereby I do not know what to get for my friends during the brithdays and I would normally go ask around or even search the web for something nice and special to buy....Thats really a brain cell killer...Therefore you guys should thank me by giving you 'hints' here....

SONY PS3

Well it's not much to ask for right? My top list is just a Nikon D90 which lot's of people do own as well...so asking for 1 ain't that bad right? Next would be a Mac Book; I don't mind a Mac Book Pro too though....hehehe...a SONY PS3 would be a handy tool for me to release some stress especially from work and last but not least...if you guys or gals can afford it, I would be really grateful......hahahhaa....yupz! my dream car....Lexus IS 250.....

LEXUS IS 250

Anyways I wanna thank you all in advance for the upcoming birthday pressies! hahahaha... Ray is already dreaming so early of the year....