Author: sweet surrender

Aurora In Kuching!

January 25, 2007January 26, 2007 sweet surrender 9 Comments

I was looking at sky just now and saw the beautiful cloud formation. So I decided to take some pictures of it. After taking, I just stared at it, admiring the beauty of nature…

Then… Suddenly… I thought my vision was having a bit of problem after staring at the sky for quite sometimes… I saw some hints of colours!! Looked carefully, WOW… They were the colours of rainbow!

I looked at it again and it’s getting more and more obvious after the cloud “split apart”. It’s much nicer in the eyes than in the photos.

After sometimes, the cloud “closed” and only left with a small hint of pink light. Not long after that, it’s back to the original.

I know I’m very “suaku” la… I know it’s not aurora la… *LOL* It’s amazing how mother nature works. I think sometimes we should just stop for a while and appreciate the simplest thing in life in this hectic world.

Interesting

Dabai

January 25, 2007January 25, 2007 sweet surrender 9 Comments

I’m sure the locals are familiar with this. I called it “o-ka-na” in Hokkien, direct translation in English is “black olive”. The correct name is “dabai” for the natives but how does the Chinese called it? I’m not sure. I know many Foochows(a Chinese dialect group in Malaysia) like this a lot. They usually served them with dark soy sauce.

I called it “o-ka-na” because I saw it for the first time when I’m still a little girl. It’s given to us by my aunt’s boss from Sibu. It’s black in colour and my mom told me it’s a type of olive, so that’s how I invented the name 😛

Some people don’t like dabai because it has a peculiar taste. Hmm… But I don’t think it tastes strange. Dabai tastes like an olive to me hahahah… Just like those olive on the pizza except it’s a bit more stronger. You do not need to cook it, you just need to soak them in a pot of hot water until soft and they are ready for consumption.

My way of preparing is by boiling a pot of water with salt. After that, soak them and cover the pot with the lid until they are soft. That’s all. I don’t add anything to it. The saltiness of the salt and the flesh of the dabai is heavenly. Yummy… The saltiness is up to you, there is no fixed amount of salt used. I don’t like it with soy sauce(dark soy sauce right?) as it’s very messy and the taste of the soy sauce is too empowering.

By the way, the inside of the seed can be eaten too. Just “hammer” the seed and eat the inside. Sometimes it tasted a bit raw sometimes it’s tasteless. The texture is a bit like boiled peanuts.

By the way, you can’t get dabai all year round, it only comes out at certain time of the year, I’m not sure when but the last time I had it was December 2006. One more thing, I heard that dabai is very high in cholesterol. Is it true?

Food Porn

Popiah

January 24, 2007January 24, 2007 sweet surrender 11 Comments

Nothing much happenning around. Sorry for the ad overloaded because I have nothing to blog. Will minimise my ad posts and dig something out to blog.

Popiah, one of my favourite food. It’s not easy to find good popiah nowadays. Last time my parents used to buy them from Petanak market but don’t know where’s that lady gone to now? I heard that there a nice popiah stall at Expert Food Court, Jalan Song.

What is popiah? It’s a type of spring roll usually sold and widely eaten by the Chinese community in Kuching. Is there popiah in other part of Sarawak? Does other races eat it too? Hmmm… I’m not sure about this.

The outer layer is made from pastry sheet. The inside consists of various type of veggies such as long beans, carrots, water chesnuts, salad leaves, chillies… I’m not very sure what else they have in there as different people have different fillings, different preferences. The inside is laced with sweet peanut sauce and if you prefer spicier version, you can have sweet chilli sauce added too. Popiah is consider a type of vegetarian food(I guess…) since there is no meat in there and many vegetarian shops selling it too.

The savoury taste of the filling, the crunchiness of the veggies and the softness of the tastelss pastry sheet blends really well together. So many type of flavours and so many type of textures… Oh la la… Though it’s a bit messy when eating them, you need skill for it 😛 However there are ways to make it less messy. Here’s one way…
Just use a plate and a spoon *LOL*

Food Porn

Sweet Surrender’s Page Rank(PR)

January 23, 2007January 24, 2007 sweet surrender 2 Comments

WOW!! Raining for 3 days now… Not stopping yet. However, I’m not worry that my place will be flooded as my area is consider one of the highest areas in Kuching. Though The Sarawak River is just nearby and Senari Port is nearby too, there is no fear of flood. If my area floods, the whole Kuching will be under water *LOL* Summore, where else can you find so many hills in the middle of Kuching? My area alone already have more than 3 hills. The highest is the one where CHMSNo1 situated. The hills are not like what you imagine with muddy road, big tall trees everywhere, orang utans swinging from tree to tress -_-” Sorry… As we always get comments/questions about living in the jungle or on trees. Surprising at this era, we still get questions and statements like this hahaha… They are well-lit tarred roads with shops built at both sides and the dividers are planted with decoration trees.

Aiyooo… PPP rejected many of my posts because according to them, my page is less than PR1/10!! -_-” No wonder ReviewMe didn’t want to approve me after so many times of submitting. But… But.. But… I checked from so many sites that mine is PR3/10 using http://www.irenelaw.com and http://www.irenelaw.com. FYI, I’m using irenelaw.com for PPP 🙁 See!
(result only applicable for Home page)
Then, from MyPageRank.net.
Next, CheckPageRank.com.
The fourth one is SEO Chat, Click to view my report.
One more,
Finally this(result only applicable for Home page)

My advise is, DO NOT FULLY TRUST THESE CHECKERS!! 🙁

Except… Maybe this one -_-”

My post about home security got rejected because the reason was that my common PR was PR0/10, average PR was 0.18/10. Fine… I understand as the requirement for that post was I must have PR4/10. Then, today another got rejected because the requirement is PR3/10 about SEO & SEM and I was told that my common PR is still 0/10 and average PR now is only 0.35/10, a bit of increment from the other day. So pathetic. So, for these two posts, I had removed all the links to the sponsors’ sites and remove it from Commercial Break category and edit them to be my own post for SEO purpose *EVIL GRIN* Now… I’m waiting for 3 more rejections as they all required PR3/10 and above.

Another one about the photography contest was rejected because my blog is not a photography blog so I had deleted this post and replaced with other post and the replaced post was approved! Hahaha…

Now… I think I have to do tramendous SEO works to this blog so that I can have higher PR. I already have several plans for it but don’t worry, they have nothing to do with my entries, they are just some technical stuffs such as tweaking the codings here and there. Also… Mind to exchange link with me? 😛

Bulletin Board, Randomness, Tech Stuffs

Behind The Scene – Bloggers’ Meet

January 22, 2007January 24, 2007 sweet surrender 11 Comments

Saw the news about Jeff Ooi and Ahirudin bin Attan are being sued by NST for defamation last week. Click here to read more about it. So, what do you think? I’m not worry as I’m not into topics like that but I feel that it’s not very fair. The ISA didn’t even catch them but it’s NST that wants to sue them. I don’t understand and there is not need to make me understand.
Damn Streamyx! Kept disconnecting! I can’t update my blog! Missed out opportunities in PPP too! *ANGRY* Took me ages to get this post up *show middle finger*Support the petition!

Warning: Bandwidth sucker!!

Last year, Sue wanted to meet us, Kuching bloggers, when she’s back in Kuching and we had a bloggers’ meet at her place and it was really an eye opener to her. Not only that, Unker Ho’s Lala Crofts that met us at bing! also had the chance to feel how a bloggers’ meet is like. I’m sure many of you, non bloggers, have this big question mark of what’s going on when there’s a bloggers’ meet taking place? Usually it’s a private affair just like when you are meeting up with your gang. However, there are special things going on that you will not get in a normal meet. I’m going to let you go behind the scene and remember, you see it first in Sweet Surrender!

Cameras, cameras, cameras…

When the food/drinks come, it’s photo taking time. No one can touch the food/drinks until we are satisfied with our photos.

Eat, eat, eat, drink, drink, drink, talk, talk, talk. Eh! Got ppl take photo! *POSE* Others that don’t know just yakking away and do their own stuffs and showing off skills.

Camwhoring, disturb people’s food/drinks, making fun of others, making fun of ourselves, and if you see bloggers that kept hiding their faces from the cameras, these bloggers would like to remain anonymous.

That’s about it. Oh… We were labelled the noisy bunch by the one of the staff of bing!. -_-” We are loud too! 😛 Also, group photo is a must to us. Worst, if there are 10 cameras, someone that is appointed to be the photographer(usually it’s anyone that is not related to our meet) will need to handle 10 cameras.

The end!