Pangkalan Kubu

Pangkalan Kubu @ Fort Jetty
Situated next to the Astana

Pangkalan Sapi

Pangkalan Sapi or in English - Cow Jetty,
but I didn't see any cow here!
I'm not sure how she got the name,
does anyone know?

Or is this the Pangkalan Batu while the Pangkalan Sapi is at the opposite site of the river?

Kuching Old Court House

Maybe this post title should be changed to
'A Big Handsome Tree Infront Of Kuching's Old Court House'

Penambang Boat

Kuching's view from Penambang Boat.
Each ride between Pangkalan Sapi and Pangkalan Kubu cost 40 sen.

Pak Tambang

Government Boat

This boat is only cater for government staffs,
they can get a free ride between Pangkalan Sapi and Pangkalan Kubu.

Hak Guan

Nice big portion laksa at Hak Guan.
One of the many great home-based cafe in Kuching, besides laksa, they also have Kueh Chap, Kolo Mee and Chicken Rice.

Laksa - RM3.50

21 Types Of Negative Friends

1. The Promise Breaker
2. The Taker
3. The Double-Crosser
4. The Risk Taker
5. The Self-Absorbed
6. The Cheat
7. The Discloser
8. The Competitor
9. The One-Upper
10. The Rival
11. The Faulfinder
12. The Downer
13. The Rejecter
14. The Abuser
15. The Loner
16. The Blood Sucker
17. The Therapist
18. The Interloper
19. The Copy Cat
20. The Controller
21. The Caretaker
    

* From herworld Sept 2008 issue

Mr. Ho's Fine Foods (2008)

Mr. Ho's Fine Foods @ Crown Square

Ribena Sprite

After more than 15 min waiting, akhir makanan pun sampai, disebabkan terlalu lapar, kite makan dulu, pastu baru ambil gambar ok..

Salad - taste slightly bitter

Soup with garlic bread (dah masuk perut)

Spaghetti with sausage - a bit spicy but nice

Black pepper lamb with rice..yummylicious

BoA - Don't Start Now

Ah jik eun shi jahk hah ji mah
Geu oppa neun gi dah ri gaet jji nah ae sarang eul
Uh rin nah reul ah kkyuh joo duhn haet sahl
Geu ae hwahn hahn mi so gaht chi moh doo gahn jik hah gae ssuh

Unni yuh pae ee ssuht dduhn nae sohn jah beun geu soon gahn
Geu ae muht jjin noon beet ae nah neun uh ruh buh ryuh ssuh

*Don't start now, the feeling's come and gone
Nahn ji geum eun uh rin guhl geu ddae kkah
ji mahn gi dah ryuh jwuh yo
Don't start now, the feeling's come and gone
Nae sarang eul ji kyuh jwuh geu ddae gah dwae
myun nae gae roh wah yo

Hak kyo ae suh doh rah wah sseul ddae
Geu ae chah gah wah ee ssuh noo gool boh
ruh wah sseul kkah?
Geu saram ae yup jjah ri aen nae gah geu reul bah rah
boh goh ee ssuh
Nae gae ki seu hahl kkuh yah

Bool guh jin nae uhl gool ae dah gah ohn soon gahn
Ee moh deun guh shi nah ae hwan sahng ee uh ssuh

* Repeat

Nae gae bo naen geu saram ae sun mool ee unni
ae gae ddo hah nah gah wah ee ssuh
Nae gah moh doo chah ji hahl soo up neun gae ahn tah
kkah wuh ssuh
Gi da ryuh yo geu ri muhl jin ah na yo yae ppeun
mo seup euh roh ah pae suhl kkae yo
Geu ddaen nah reul ah nah joo goh mahl hae yo
nahl sarang hae ssuht ddah goh

Unni yuh pae ee ssuht dduhn nae sohn jah beun geu soon gahn
Doh rah gah duhn sae sang moh doo muhm chwuh buh ryuh ssuh
Uh ruh buh ryuh ssuh

********************

I've been waiting for so long
What I thought I had for you is gone
But now you're callin' me
You've been checkin' loud but you said nothing
When you knew that
I felt something
Shoulda never fell for you

You wanna talk that game
But you ain't got the nerve
You're gonna trip on this
When you get what you deserve

*(I'm over you) Don't start now
The feeling's come and gone
You played me far too long
Now I'm over you
Toodle--oo baby

* My friends, they tell me you're no good
I never listen but I should
Cause you ain't right for me
Now you're stopping over every day
Getting all your stuff up in my face
And that ain't what I need
There was a time when you were fine
You were the one
And now I'm steppin' out
The deal is said and done

All I wanted was to chill some time with you
But I never got a single sign from you
Had to be a player crimin' with your crew
Thinking it was dope
Now you're comin' on ancient history
Take a look around it ain't no mystery
Time for you to find another fantasy
'Cause I ain't steppin' with you

Balance Sheet Of Life

Our Birth is our Opening Balance
Our Death is our Closing Balance
Our Prejudiced Views are our Liabilities
Our Creative Ideas are our Assets

Heart is our Current Asset
Soul is our Fixed Asset
Brain is our Fixed Deposit
Thinking is our Current Account

Achievements are our Capital
Character & Morals, our Stock-in-Trade
Friends are our General Reserves
Values & Behaviour are our Goodwill
Patience is our Interest Earned
Love is our Dividend
Children are our Bonus Issues
Education is Brands / Patents

Knowledge is our Investment
Experience is our Premium Account
The Aim is to Tally the Balance Sheet Accurately.
The Goal is to get the Best Presented Accounts Award

Some very Good and Very bad things ....
The most destructive habit....... ......... ........Worry
The greatest Joy......... ......... ......... ......Giving
The greatest loss.......Loss of self-respect

The most satisfying work........ .......Helping others
The ugliest personality trait....... .......Selfishness
The most endangered species..... ....Dedicated leaders
Our greatest natural resource.... ......... ...Our youth

The greatest 'shot in the arm'........ ...Encouragement
The greatest problem to overcome.... ......... .....Fear
The most effective sleeping pill....... Peace of mind
The most crippling failure disease..... .........Excuses

The most powerful force in life........ .......... ..Love
The most dangerous act...... ..A gossip
The world's most incredible computer.... ....The brain
The worst thing to be without..... ......... ..... Hope

The deadliest weapon...... ......... ........The tongue
The two most power-filled words....... ......... 'I Can'
The greatest asset....... .......... ......... ......Faith
The most worthless emotion.... ......... ....Self- pity
The most beautiful attire...... ......... ..........SMILE
The most prized possession.. ......... ......Integrity
The most powerful channel of communication. .....Prayer
The most contagious spirit...... ......... ......Enthusiasm

Life ends; when you stop Dreaming,
Hope ends; when you stop Believing,
Love ends; when you stop Caring,
And Friendship ends; when you stop Sharing

You know you are a true Kuchingite when

Found this interesting entry from Funnymayhem blog, which I think so true, and decided to post it here .. excluding the point that are not applicable to me ;)

You know you are a true Kuchingite when...

1. Your most important decision on waking up in the morning is to decide which coffee shop or food court to take your breakfast. ( kikiki..so true )

2. You eat out 7 days a week, three times a day. ( almost true, lazy to go out if its raining, so sometime cook at home )

3. You have at least 5 favourtie laksa stalls, 7 kolo mee, 2 kueh chap stalls and ONE beef noodle stall, ie Ah Mui mee sapi, at the Open Air Market. ( Mee sapi I prefer the one at Green Hill Corner, and Kuey Chap at 3rd mile night market...yummy.. )

4. You go nuts if you don't get your fix of kolo mee or laksa at least five times a week. ( sometimes )

5. You think nothing of driving 10 miles out to check out a new food court ( agree )

6. You request the waiter for plastic bag to ta pau your unfinished food in a restaurant. ( sometimes pai se²)

7.When it comes to tipping, er....sorry...what tipping? ( yah..what tips?! )

8. You do your major grocery shopping only on Friday, the price-war-day between the supermarkets. ( sometimes )

9. You get your mother-in-law, your father-in-law to tag along to buy toilet rolls (super duper cheap but limited to two packets per person), then buy them lunch/dinner at HongKong Noodle House. ( Aiyo..this one I cannot stand, why ho they use so much of toilet paper...puzzle )

So Kuchingite...what say you?

China's milk scandal bares government shortcomings

By CHARLES HUTZLER – 2 hours ago

BEIJING (AP) — The note posted in July on the Web site of China's food safety inspection agency came from a doctor: There had been a sudden rise in infants turning up at his hospital with kidney stones after drinking the same brand of formula.

The warning, which urged an investigation, went unheeded. In the two weeks since China began piecemeal reporting about contamination of the milk supply, a picture has emerged of official indifference, greed and government dysfunction.

Among the startling details: the practice of adulterating milk was widely known in the industry, and one dairy knew since late last year that its formula was sickening children.

The revelations have dismayed a broad segment of the public — parents — who feel the government has breached their trust. Tens of thousands of children have sought medical care, nearly 13,000 have been hospitalized and four infants have died.

"I'm just disappointed because the government should have done more to protect its citizens," said Liao Yanfang, a migrant worker whose 1-year-old son was found to have kidney stones Tuesday at Beijing Children's Hospital. Since birth, her only child had been drinking infant formula made by the company at the center of the scandal, Sanlu Group Co., she said.

"I fed my baby powdered milk because ads said it was more nutritious than breast milk. We trusted that the government would provide adequate tests to ensure food quality," she said.

In the past two weeks, Beijing has recalled a broad array of milk products — all tainted by the industrial chemical melamine — and arrested Sanlu's chairwoman and several suppliers. It has dismissed officials and offered free medical care to the afflicted. "Nothing like this will ever happen again," Premier Wen Jiabao pledged.

But questions remain about why food and health inspectors ignored growing signs of trouble in the milk supply and when the communist leadership knew about it. Galling to many Chinese is the suspicion that high-level pressures for a successful Beijing Olympics added momentum for a cover-up.

"The dairy products for the Olympic Games were safe. I think the inspection agency already knew about it, and they tried to protect the 'national brand,'" said Zhou Ze, a law professor at China Youth University For Political Science.

Regaining the confidence of the Chinese public and the world is likely to take concerted doing. The scandal has battered the government's image, so carefully cultivated during the Olympics.

Governments heavily courted by Beijing have sounded the alarm. Normally pro-China Singapore has banned the sale and import of Chinese dairy products, from yogurt to candy. At least nine other countries have done the same.

Other nations, from Canada to Australia, have increased testing of Chinese food imports. The European Union ordered customs inspectors Tuesday to be on alert for products such as bread or chocolate to insure they contain no contaminated milk.

In the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration expanded its sampling of imports from Asia to include dairy-based candies and desserts. Over the weekend, the agency announced it had started checking imports of bulk food ingredients, including milk powder, whey and some milk-derived proteins. No tainted products from China have turned up.

The overall impression is of an authoritarian government struggling to enforce its writ on a rapidly developing country where officials and businesses often go their own way.

Just four years ago, Premier Wen issued an apology and promised greater transparency when official cover-ups aided the spread of SARS from China to the world. Last year, after exported pet food, cough medicine, toothpaste and toys made with toxic products sickened and killed pets and people in North and South America, the government promised to overhaul safety inspection regimes.

"Although after SARS, the government promised a more open media environment and to protect people's right of expression, without essential measures, it's just empty talk. What is really needed is to change the system's framework," said Yang Fengchun of Peking University's School of Government. "The government and companies have lied to people, so it becomes very difficult to make people believe again in what they say."

This time around, promises of official oversight fell flat in the boisterously growing dairy industry. Almost nonexistent two decades ago, the industry has boomed, transforming once scarce milk and milk powder into staples that have boosted nutritional levels and health from the urban middle class to the rural poor.

Unlike the United States, where dairies run farms with thousands of cows and are better able to control quality, milk in China comes from a patchwork of producers. Most are small farms with just a few cows who sell the raw milk to collection stations, which in turn sell mainly to giant dairy processing companies.

"The middleman is where the system breaks down totally," said David Oliver, a New Zealander who is a dairy industry consultant in Beijing.

Two giant processing companies — Mengniu Dairy Group Co. and Yili Industrial Group Co. — control nearly 60 percent of the total market for milk, yogurt and other dairy products, according to Beijing Orient Agribusiness Consultant Co.

But in the past three years, prices for feed, fuel and other costs rose — feed by as much as 30 percent. Further pressures came last year when Beijing enacted price controls to tame double-digit inflation for food.

Milk collectors found themselves squeezed between the farmers asking for more money and the processors who demanded that prices be held down, said Chen Lianfang of Orient Agribusiness.

That squeeze gave suppliers incentives to tamper with the raw milk, watering it down and then adding ingredients, said Chen.

Melamine, a relatively cheap binding agent used in plastics and as a flame retardant, is rich in nitrogen, fooling widely used tests that check for protein. When mixed with formaldehyde, it dissolves in water.

In the wake of the scandal, inspectors found melamine in products from Yili, Mengniu, Sanlu and 19 other dairy companies.

Government officials have painted the middlemen as the main villains. A vice governor of Hebei province, where Sanlu is located, said one of the dairy's suppliers began using melamine three years ago.

Chinese health officials have said no harm comes from consuming tiny amounts of melamine, less than 0.63 milligrams per kilogram. But some of Sanlu's infant formula contained up to 4,000 times that amount, as much as 25 milligrams per kilogram.

Trouble with Sanlu's products began brewing last December, with parents complaining to the company about infants sickened by formula, Chinese state television said. Sanlu bought off one complainer with free milk products. Doctors and reporters also sounded warnings.

At an editorial meeting at one state-run newspaper last week, editors were told that its Hebei-based reporter wrote an "internal reference" sent to Beijing in March about contamination of Sanlu products, said two participants. They requested their names and that of their newspaper not be used for fear of retribution by officials.

A pediatric urologist, Feng Dongchuan, said in a posting July 24 on his online journal that he had treated seven infants for kidney stones at the Pediatric Hospital in the central city of Xuzhou, an unusually high number.

"Coincidentally all consumed a certain famous domestic brand of formula," Feng wrote. He said more cases were reported in nearby Nanjing.

That day a urologist who would not give his name sent a similar warning to the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, naming the brand of formula — Sanlu.

The reply, posted a week later, said: "Please report this problem to the health departments."

Meanwhile, Sanlu was quietly ordering distributors to remove milk powder and infant formula, distributors said. China Central Television said Sanlu knew in June that tests had detected melamine.

At board meetings in the Hebei capital of Shijiazhuang on Aug. 2 and again on Aug. 9, Sanlu executives were confronted by the dairy's New Zealand investor, the Fonterra cooperative, which urged them to go public. Company executives and local government officials refused.

The central government said it only learned of the scandal Sept. 8 — it does not say how — even though inspection, health and other government departments in Hebei and Beijing knew earlier.

Associated Press reporters Joe McDonald and Chi-Chi Zhang and researchers Xi Yue and Bonnie Cao contributed to this report.

New DUN - Sept 2008

New DUN - June 2007

Current DUN