Well, I used to frequent to Penang Island for a short holiday as it is undeniably a very nice place to visit. The beautiful beach, botanical garden, shopping and certainly, great varieties of food.

Though, over the time, I found the place is getting more and more congested resulted from the development. Giant manufacturing facilities occupies huge buildings at the industrial zone in the island. Intel, Seagate, HP, Dell, you name it.

But no matter what the development bring in, Penang is still one of the most preferred place I will spend for a short vacation.

I just spent a few day there again last weekend. Though I didn't really felt that I visited many places there but well, it is still an enjoyable and relax time.

I reach the Penang bridge around 4.00pm. Traffic isn't very congested yet and it doesn't take long for me to reach the hotel at Gurney Drive.

Having stayed on several different hotel in the island, this time, I stayed at Gurney Hotel at the end of Gurney Drive. All my previous stay was by the beach along Batu Feringghi. Perhaps this time, I wanted to get closer to the town area instead of the beach again.

Wife told me that they have some promotion around this period just before the school holiday begin so I grab this opportunity to take a short break. I ain't like crowd and its my burfday.

I booked a Studio Suites with a King size bed. The room is... quite okay lo. Located at level 24, I could see further to the horizon and partially to the city of Georgetown too.

The room comes with two air conditioning unit, good lah since the weather was so damn hot recently. There is a nice table by the glass wall and it also comes with a LAN cable if I were to use their broadband. Well, I ain't want no computer on my holiday though.

The bathroom was comfortably large with a shower room and a jacuzzi... yumm jacuzzi!

The Gurney Hotel isn't located right next to the beach however, they have a very nice recreational area located at level 7. There are two swimming pools, one for the adults and another one for kids. Too bad that the swimming pool for kids is closed to maintenance. I was thinking of bringing my little boy to play there but sight.... I want my money back!

Anyway, the recreational area also has a gym if you want to do some lifting or exercise.

Other than that, you could also attempt to shoot some bullseye too as there are two archery lane there.

Some table tennis or billiard? Noah, I duno how to play any of these.

Gurney Hotel is somewhat a pleasant place to stay. Coffee Bean is just right next to the lobby entrance and Star Bucks is just right behind it. The only thing this annoy me is their basement parking lot. It was so narrow and that I need someone to help me to navigate.

Gurney Drive

The one and only place which I will definitely drop by is Gurney Drive. Who would resist the foodilicious factor here.

The beach along the Gurney Drive has dramatically changed recently. The sandy beach which once stretched along the drive has now becoming a stretch of mud land. During the low tide, the sea water is like miles away from the drive where we walk. During the past, I used to walk around the sandy beach looking for sea shells but now, who dare to go down there? Its muddy, dirty and doesn't smell good at all.

Some blame it to the uncontrolled developement, some says it was pollution. But whatever it is, the mudland of Gurney Drive will be there for quite some times to come. And if it kept being in that way, I guess someday, Gurney Drive will be turning into a mangrove swamp and the once beautiful drive is history!

There isn't anything else which is interesting to see on the muddy beach now except... mudskipper. There are whole lots of them now.

As the evening sky started to turn dark, we went to the famour Gurney Drive hawker center for some foodilicious stuff. I missed the Pasembur and Laksa so much... yumm...

This place is always pack of patrons. Whether the economy is turning down of not, there are alway a group of people who could still spend and in the case where food is involve... who doesn't need to eat!

My beloved Pasembur. It was like there's no other Pasembur better that of Penang.... ok, its just that I never tried elsewhere Pasembur yet.

And of course, the infamous Penang Asam Laksa.

Stretch of makeshift stalls selling various types of delicious cuisines. I was like wanted to eat 'em all but well, can't fill in that much. I swear, I'll be back for more.

I still remember that I have blogged about the famous delicacy I had during my holiday in the Yunnan province in China sometimes back. The Cross Bridge Noodle of Yunnan.

Now, you need not to travel thousands of miles away or to cross any bridge to enjoy this unique delicacies. Just go to the Restoran Qing Kee in Falim and you will get to enjoy a bowl of authentic cross-bridge-noodle.

The noodle is serve just the same way it did in China. A bowl of hot soup and then pour in all the ingredients as well as rice noodle and the cross-bridge-noodle is readily served. For most of us in this country, we used to eat those heavily tasted stuff such as curry, laksa, tom yam and so on. Not many people really enjoy noodle serve on a plain soup. This cross-bridge-noodle soup has a it taste of peanuts and some mild herbs on it, kinda unique.

The set of noodle also comes with this plate of braised porks and chicken. There are chicken wings and egg and some pork belly meat which is sliced. Its not only looks good but taste good too.

Also, there are this cross-over-product of Tom Yam Noodle for those who wants spice up the table. However, their Tom Yam is just so so only lah. Can eat, but don't expect so much out of it lor.

Their famous noodle is not complete without this unique sauce. It could be mixed with some soy sauce and black vinegar for more ummph! It taste a little spicy and sour.

There are also several others noodle dishes as well as side orders. These Gao Zhi were soft from the outside and juicy inside. Simply delicious.

And also this specially fried chicken taste just great.

Restoran Qing Kee
No. 7 Jalan Mas,
Taman Mas,
30000 Falim, Ipoh, Perak.

Tel: 012-511 0433

Note* Non Halal
Open from 10:30am to 2:30pm and 5:30pm to 9:30pm
Closed on Tuesday

Known as the 'Jung Jai Fan' or a mini pot rice, you could see these small little metal pot with rice inside it steamed to perfection and then with a varieties of different topping dishes you could choose from. Don't underestimate its simplicity, these mini pot rice is simply delicious.

Once in a while, I would come over to the food court at the Pengkalan Emas Shopping Mall to enjoy a pot of scrumptious rice. There are several choice of topping dishes you could choose from.

This is the mini pot rice with pork ribs cooked in soy sauce. Each of it has its own uniqueness of taste and I just can't say which one is the best as I just love every each of them. Yumm...

Mini Pot Rice with chicken and chinese sausage. Simply delicious.

Other than the delicious mini pot rice, there are also nutritiously steamed soup.

This stall operate at the Pengkalan Emas shopping mall food court opposite Tesco at Station 18.
Open Daily from 11:00am to 6:00pm.
Note* Non Halal.

Castle Roca has started its business several months ago. Located at Jalan Tunku Abdul Rahman a.k.a Jalan Kuala Kangsar nearby the Sungai Siput highway exit, you can find this restaurant on the row of new shop lots on your left if you drive towards Tasek.

The interior of this restaurant is rather nice. It also has an open air at the side of the restaurant. This restaurant offers a varieties of local cuisines as well as Chinese and western delicacies.

This is their crispy fried Chicken Maryland. Yumm, looks so tempted. It also had a ham and sausage other than the abundance of fries. The chicken chop were tender and is crispily cracking while you chewing it. Gosh....

This is Orange Fried Chicken Chop. Rather similar to the Chicken Maryland except the Ham and Sausage were missing....

a Crispy fried Calamari Ring. Well, it was just like any regular Calamari Ring.

This is the Banana Chocolate Shaved Ice Kind of unique. It doesn't taste very sweet like what I expect on a dessert but well, with the banana and crispy chocolate chip mixing and cracking in my mouth, it was kinda first hand experience. Very well.

As a conclusion, I find this restaurant is just just only. Although it has a very nice environment, but if I were to mention about the food aspect, it does offer a good varieties. But whats in the menu is just a regular list of dishes which you may find in most other places. Nothing irregular.

But if you were to had a regular dinner with friends or family, this would be a good place though.
Pricing wise, the chicken chop cost RM8.90 and RM9.00, Calamari Ring cost RM5.50 and the not-so-sweet Banana Chocolate Shaved Ice cost RM5.50.

Castle Roca Restaurant
No. 54, Persiaran Tembok,
Desa Tawas Gemilang,
30010 Ipoh, Perak.

Tel. 05-549 0068

Note* This restaurant serve Non-Halal food

Over the recent months, I have got several issue with my web hosting. It seems that downtime has become more and more frequent and I couldn't access my email during some urgent time. As the time goes by, my patience is running out.

On my recent release of my web game, there has been complaint that the game site page load goes pathetically slow. So I guess it is time to say goodbye to the current hosting. Ideally, any game site should always run on a dedicated server but as always, cost is the main culprit that most people who start to run game site for fun don't have the money to get a dedicated server.

After several days of browser shopping, I came to this conclusion;

Comparing the webhosting cost and limitation.

A shared hosting cost below USD10 per month. It is the most affordable option. The limitation, having thousands of other website in the same server mean, lag in pageload. Also, I will most likely to get suspended due to utilizing too much CPU or Memory as game application consume a whole lot more resources than a normal website. Most hosting company prohibit game site hosted on their shared hosting.

A Virtual Private Server or VPS hosting is something between a shared hosting and a dedicated server. It cost above USD10 to USD100 per month. Kind of affordable still. Instead of Disk Space and Bandwidth limit, it also specified the CPU and RAM limit.

The limitation, the server is still shared among dozens or hundreds if not thousands of users thus lag may still exists. It doesn't comes with a standard shared hosting control panel (eg CPanel or DirectAdmin) unless you pay additional $$$. However, it still have other types of control panel which you will have to learn to use them.

A Dedicated Server is the ideal choice to host a game site. It cost above USD150 per month, a throat cutting price. You get to torture the entire server hardware without limitation on your own. Everything is yours.

The limitation, I have to say it again, it is pricey. Unless your game generate good money or you got to burn a big hole on your pocket each month. Like a VPS, any additional piece of software comes with additional price. You also have to learn to manage your own server from the root or pay another sum of money to get the expert to manage it for you nicely.

My main concern about my game site is the CPU and RAM usage. Since my programming skill sucks deeply, I'm sure it consume a whole lots of processing resources. Shared Hosting is definitely a NO because there is no way I could find out how much CPU or RAM my application consume. The only way I know is when my site get suspended of over usage.

The ideal Dedicated Server is also out of the story cos I can't afford to dump USD150 every month just for the sake of fun to run a game site (which doesn't make money)

Well, I guess a VPS Hosting is the only option left and so I did. I subscribed a VPS package and hook up my application onto it. The VPS hosting package consist of;

10Gb Disk Space
150Gb Bandwidth
512Mb RAM
700MHz CPU

Cost only USD7.95 per month with a free domain when pay annually.
They offer 20% discount and double up the RAM and bandwidth now. Its a good offer I would say but then, would this cheap stuff perform as I expected? Time will tell.

My current issue is lag. Since my target clients is in the US region, choosing a US based datacenter would be ideal. I hope this VPS could improve the situation or I will have to find another host again.

My initial test shows that there are obvious pageload improvement compared with my old shared host. But since I live in Asia, I will need the user from the US region to give feedback on the performance there. All I could do now is pray...... and hope for the best.

Talk about the control panel of the VPS package. It comes with a HyperVM admin panel and Lxadmin control panel. Both this is entire new for me as I only used to CPanel and DirectAdmin on shared hosting.

HyperVM is the server admin panel. It shows the account usage like RAM usage other than disk space and bandwidth usage. It is mainly use to setup the DNS which is the Nameserver where the domain need to set for. Once I setup my DNS, I went to my domain registrar to set the domain Nameserver to point to this new setup name.

It also provide a very clear graphical information about the memory, cpu and traffic usage. this is something not available in normal shared hosting control panel.

Next is the Lxadmin control panel which is similar to the CPanel. Although I admin that CPanel is more use-friendly and more advance but Lxadmin is also capable to deliver what it need to setup a website in a short time. It took me some several hours to get used to the new control panel features.

There are several glitches alongway and their customer service didn't really get me the assistance in time. It seems that their staff don't work around the clock. Since I was living in the other side of the planet, their working hours is my sleeping hours. So, that causes a lots of delay every time problem occurs.

It took me several days to sort out everything and get used to the new system. And now I'm happy with my new hosting :)

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