Childhood Games

Childhood games. I am sure most of us would have had our share of fun and memorable childhood games. Games that ranged from hop scotch, hide and seek, spin the bottle, tick tack toe to something exotic looking like this colourful feathered thing. Correct me if I am wrong but apparently, this feathered thing is a popular game played by young ones in the kampung (village). Anyone knows the name of this apparatus? And how is it played? Would love to hear your thoughts.

What are some of your favourite childhood games? I enjoyed masak-masak (cooking using leaves and twigs from the garden), hide and seek and hopscotch....just to name a few.

Free Range Chickens

These are free range chickens. Given a choice of free range chickens (or kampung chickens as we call it here) and commercially reared (under confinement) chickens, I would choose the former. Simply because free range chickens are healthier (with no growth hormones injected to speed up growth) although the meat can be tough to chew on. That's what most people complain about when consuming free range chickens. The commercially reared ones are usually less chewy and the flesh's soft. What about you? Do you consume free range chickens?According to Wikipedia, free range is a method of farming husbandry where the animals are allowed to roam freely instead of being contained in any manner.If one allows "free range" to include "herding", free range was a typical husbandry method at least until the development of barbed wire and chicken wire. The generally poor understanding of nutrition and diseases before the Twentieth Century made it difficult to raise many livestock species without giving them access to a varied diet, and the labor of keeping livestock in confinement and carrying all their feed to them was prohibitive except for high-profit animals such as dairy cattle.In the case of poultry, free range was the dominant system until the discovery of vitamins A and D in the 1920s allowed confinement to be practiced successfully on a commercial scale. Before that, green feed and sunshine (for the vitamin D) were necessary to provide the necessary vitamin content. Some large commercial breeding flocks were reared on pasture into the 1950s. Nutritional science resulted in the increased use of confinement for other livestock species in much the same way.

Grab That Mike

Dare to grab that mike and be a speaker for the day? I am talking about speaking in public. Do you enjoy speaking in public? Or are you one who shuns it? Is public speaking or speaking to clients part of your job?

Recently, my company started a speakers' corner to train employees in public speaking. A couple of 'guinea pigs' started the ball rolling with different topics given to each participant. I sat in to listen to the speakers. Each participant was given a couple of minutes to speak. Boy...those couple of minutes were indeed long. Most people couldn't wait for the coordinator to hit the bell signaling time's up. Some were quite steady albeit abit nervous. Some babbled on with ease. Some fumbled their way through. But it's all right as those fumbling and mumbling are all part of a learning process in public speaking. Over time, people will gain confidence as they learn to speak well.

I am one who doesn't enjoy speaking in public. My job doesn't require me to do any public speaking. But I did share a Christmas message to a fairly medium sized group of about at least 20 people comprising friends and visitors a year and a half ago. In my humble opinion, I did ok.

Weekend Babble

How was your weekend? Right after work on Saturday (yes, I work half day on saturdays and I am still hoping for that elusive 5-day week), a friend and I drove to Bukit Tinggi to visit Uncle Fong (whose farm story was featured in a local newspaper as well as on my blog on the same day sometime last month). A first visit for my friend and a third for me.

Uncle Fong was expecting me as I had earlied texted him. He was cleaning out the water filter when I arrived. Poor man. Has been on his feet the whole day and had not even taken his lunch. I guess sometimes when you're so engrossed with work one can stave off lunch! Not for me though. No matter how busy I may be, I make sure I have my meals. You won't want to fall sick when you have work deadlines to meet. We chatted whilst he cleaned out the water filter. Before my arrival, an entourage of 20 people had just left his property. I was shocked to learn that 20 people stepped foot on his house. Gosh...how can he handle such a large group when he has chores to attend to. He said that he felt embarrassed that he couldn't quite attend to that group of visitors as he has work to do. I was thinking 20 people might just be too large a group to visit his farm. Maybe 10 or less would have been better.

Uncle Fong offered to brew us some tea after he was done with his filter cleaning. My friend and I agreed and we wandered off to his chicken farm (where passionfruit, bananas, mangosteen and durians are grown) whilst he busied with the tea brewing and a phone call. My friend and I laughed ourselves silly in the chicken farm where I was experimenting with a photography technique I read a couple of days ago. Didn't turn out well. Deleted those photos. I will need to try that out again another time. I hope no one heard girlie laughs ringing through the otherwise quiet farm and neighbouring houses. Oops..maybe Uncle Fong did. He must have wondered what got us into stitches in the chicken farm.

After picking up some soon-to-be-ripe passionfruits, we joined Uncle Fong for some Chinese tea in the living room of his home. For some strange reasons, we all chatted like a couple of good o'l friends who have known each other for quite sometime. We talked about investment in the local share market, travels and food. From what I gathered, Uncle Fong seemed to enjoy the DIY kind of travels with a map and a keen sense of adventure on his mind. For someone his age to backpack is indeed a marvel as not many people can do the same thing. I know I am not as adventurous as he is. And neither is my friend.

Uncle Fong offered us a homecooked dish of yam with pork. I love yam but not pork (I dislike the smell of the meat) so I politely explained so as not to offend him and ate the yam. A tasty dish that goes very well with rice. And we did just that. Uncle Fong heated up some pre-cooked rice and made a dish of steamed veggies (drizzled with soy sauce and sprinkled with fried onions) and voila there you have a simple and tasty dinner for the three of us.

As we were finishing up our meal, a mutual friend called him up. She's on her way to the farm. What timing! I guess my friend and I are in for a second round of dinner. And that's what we all did. Except for Uncle Fong. He brought his Chinese tea with him to the restaurant. No second round of food for him. Just tea and keeping company with a bunch of us. We enjoyed a dinner of fried tilapia fish, steamed egg, steamed tofu and stir fry veggies which cost us no more than RM10.20 each! This is a small village settlement so everyone seemed to know someone. A friend of Uncle Fong's son was there with his family. We were introduced to him and got to know that this man is thinking of settling down in Bukit Tinggi as he likes the environment here. He works from home so there's no commuting to work problem. Good for him. I don't mind retiring here though. There are hiking trails and waterfalls in the vicinity. Weather's cooler than in the city. Affordable food and fresh fruits and vegetables are aplenty here. What is there not to like isn't?

So You Think You Can Dance?

These girls sure can! Not just to any tune. But to the tunes of Bollywood. These young performers took to the stage to entertain guests at a community event. I bet lots of young children and adults must have been in awe of these talented girls.

Do you enjoy dancing? Belly dancing and salsa seemed to be the rage these days. I have never been much of a dancing person. But there have been moments where I have enjoyed a dance or two with friends back in my college and uni days. And the occasional partying when I started working. And then slowly over the years, it sort of phased out. I don't hit the dance floor anymore. But there's one song that I can't help but feel like jiving to and it's Abba's Dancing Queen (which happens to be and still is one of my fav songs).

Passionfruit

For some strange reasons...this photo brings to mind...the garden of eden. Must be the sight of the fruits. They looked somewhat enticing. No? In reality, this is no garden of eden. Just a farm. Where passionfruit is grown amongst others such as longans, rambutans and pineapples. The ones in my photo have not ripen yet so they're green in colour.

What's passionfruit like? According to Wikipedia, the passion fruit is round to oval, yellow or dark purple at maturity, with a soft to firm, juicy interior filled with numerous seeds. The fruit can be grown to eat or for its juice, which is often added to other fruit juices to enhance aroma. Fresh passionfruit is known to be high in vitamin A, potassium and dietary fiber.

Have you tasted passionfruit? Do you like it? So far, I have only tasted passionfruit which has been added to another fruit juice. Following the farm visit, I got to taste the fruit on its own -which didn't turn out sweet at all. Instead, it tasted rather sourish. I should have added some honey to the pulp. Nevertheless, it wasn't a difficult task swallowing sourish fruit pulp. Just that abit of sweetness would have worked better for me.

Found a nice dessert recipe using passionfruit - check out Grilled Bananas With Passionfruit And Yoghurt.

Ingredients: 3 firm bananas, 2 tbsp of brown sugar, 1.5 tbsp of butter, half cup of vanilla yoghurt, pulp from 2-3 passionfruit.

1. Pre-heat the grill. Line a baking tray with foil.
2. Slice the bananas in half, length-ways. Spread the butter over the cut side. Place the bananas, cut side up, on the baking tray.
3. Sprinkle bananas with brown sugar. Grill for 4 minutes then gently turn bananas over and grill for another 4 minutes or until golden and soft.
4. Divide bananas equally amongst two serving dishes. Top with vanilla yogurt and passionfruit pulp. Serve immediately.

Little Hearts And Stars

Tired of plain-looking cupcakes? Scatter some little hearts and stars. A great way to decorate these cupcakes for that special occasion - be it a birthday, valentine's day or tea party.Here's a recipe for chocolate frosting courtesy of Delicious Cupcakes (written by Susanna Tee).

125g plain chocolate
2 tbsp castor sugar
150ml sour cream

To make the frosting, break the chocolate into a heatproof bowl. Set the bowl over a saucepan of gently simmering water and heat until melted, stirring occasionally. Remove from the heat and allow to cool slightly, then whisk in the sugar and sour cream until combined. Spread the frosting over the tops of the cupcakes and leave to set in the refrigerator before serving.

Like this series of photos, you have a choice of using colourful edible hearts and stars to jazz up the chocolate frosting on the cupcakes.