This is the third year visit to the Fo Guang Shan Dong Zen temple at Jenjarom Selangor. Compared with the previous years decoration, this year seems to be far less decorated. Obvious, even my brother in law say this year, the temple only order very little flowers from Cameron Highlands for decoration. But anyway, the temple continues to mesmerizes me with its beauty.

Its the year of tiger and we have gigantic tiger sculpture here. Looks kinda cute.

Colorful flowers decorating the surroundings. Even the temple is slashing down the expenses to beautify the place for this Chinese New Year. If one been here over the previous CNY, it is obvious.

Cute little white tiger sculpture.

Cats?

And how about some ferocious looking tiger sculpture. Grrrr...

Oh yeah, Kung Fu Panda is here too and he has some brothers coming along.

More colorful flora decorating the surroundings.

A gigantic little buddha statue in the garden.

The goddess of mercy statue.

A large pile of colorful flower decorating outside the temple hall.

A buddha statue.

I took the opportunity to pray and make a wish at the temple. Hoping that this year would be a fine year for me and my family.

Many of you must have watched the famous Korean drama 'Dai Cheong Gam' starring the beautiful actress Lee Young Ae. It was a second wave hit drama right after the Winter Sonata. Though I'm not a drama fans but I was quite fascinated with the drama. It really explain much about the old traditional life about Korea. The costumes, lifestyle, food and menace.

My visit to Korea few months ago also open up my eyes of how beautiful the country was and their food too. Recently, I pay a visit to a rather famous Korean restaurant at Ipoh Garden East behind Jusco. Onix Jun may not be a familiar name to identify this restaurant so there was this three chinese character on its signboard which read Dai Cheong Gam.

The interior of the restaurant was simple and clean. There was also a portion of the restaurant made of a wooden platform where you could be seated and enjoy your meal on a traditional Korean style. That was somewhat similar to the Japanese Tatami room.

This restaurant is specializes on Korean dishes and you could also find some crossover Japanese meal such as Sushi too. I have tasted the Korean cuisines at Korea lately and some of the dishes in their menu seems to be really familiar.

Just like the way we had it at Korea, there are plates of cold dishes on the table before any dishes arrive. And of course, you can't miss the famous Kim Chi on the table. Many of us does not used to these cold preserved dishes but well, why not give it a try though just for the sake of knowing Korean eating culture there. The Kim Chi has a very pungent taste of garlic and I don't really enjoy raw garlic taste.

This is one of the famous Korean dishes known as Dolsot Bibimbap. It consists of calrose rice topped with some vegetables and sauce inside a hot stone bowl. A raw egg is drop onto the top as the final touch before serve to the hungry customer. It does look very nice and once all the things inside the bowl get mixed up, you could smell the fragrant aroma raises from all the ingredients inside the bowl. Yumm... it was just so tempting. In fact, this is the best cuisines I ever had during my Korea trip. So, you got to try this.

This is the Udon soup noodle. It is served together with some mixed vegetables, tofu, prawn tempura and some dried seaweed toppings. The soup taste a bit sweet but it was a well mixed up combination.

Then we had this grilled pork with salad. I had this too during my Korea trip which I consider among the best dishes I had along the trip. The pork was grilled and cut into small pieces so that you could wrap it into a salad leave and then dump the whole thing into your mouth and start chewing. It taste really good.

The whole thing sum up to a RM71.00 bill. Not cheap but still worth the price considering you are getting the authentic cooking of Korea. The peoples who open this restaurant was a Korean family. They ain't speak Cantonese but you could speak Mandarin or English with them.

Onix Jun (Dai Cheong Gam) Korean Restaurant
31, Jalan Medan Ipoh 4,
Bandar Baru Medan Ipoh,
31400 Ipoh, Perak.

Tel: 05 5477530

Business Hours
11:30am to 3:00pm
5:30pm to 11:00pm
Sunday 11:30am to 11:00pm
Closed on 1st and 2nd Tuesday of each month

GPS location: 4°37'2"N 101°7'14"E

I guess every time during festive season, this same ole thing will happen. Hand phone line inaccessible and you cannot call out not even sending out message. but this year, it suck deep into the bottom. This year, the telco line was like going on a long long holiday that I could not make any calls from day to night to the next day and till the next next day! Just WTF happen with the telcos. Didn't they raise up the capacity during the festive time or their data center was blown away by the terrorist.

I remember last year, it only jam on the new year eve and everything goes back to normal soon after midnight. That itself I already think was bad but it turn worst this year.

Whatever it is, it sucks! And for everyone out there who uses a hand phone, be prepare to face the same problem over the next upcoming festive time. The network will screw you again.

When you talk about Japanese food, the first thing in mind would be the hefty price it came along with, especially when you enter a restaurant which is specializes in the Japanese food. You certainly not going off without paying more than RM30 per person for a moderate order. Japanese foods are expensive for good reason. The ingredients are mostly imported and there aren't many good chef which could made good authentic Japanese food around.

And one thing which bears in my mind about Japanese food is its presentation. Japanese culinary is a fine art which takes a good long time to master. From a simple plate of Sushi to a everything-in-one plate of Teppanyaki, you could see everything is very well arranged and looks very nice when served. Taste good or not, that is the next thing you need to discover.

Enough talk about this authentic Japanese foodstuff here. Just today, I came across this self claim fast food restaurant serving Teppanyaki dishes in Greentown, Ipoh. If I’m not mistaken, this place was formerly the Kimberly Cafe which I reviewed before.

Here, you will find some less authentic Tepanyaki dishes at a very affordable price.

You won’t find a Teppanyaki bar in the restaurant where you could see the chef prepares the Teppanyaki food right in front of the customers. It is all prepared in the kitchen and god-know-how-it-was-cooked.

It is said that this is a fast food restaurant but I didn’t count how fast the food arrive upon my order but it is rather fast since we are the only customer there at the time, lol.

Looking at the menu, I could see their Teppanyaki dishes is served in several way such as Teppanyaki in tin foil, serve with either plain rice or fried rice or even Teppanyaki with Udon noodle. Price starting from RM6.90 which is really cheap.

I had a cup of Champagne milk shake and wifey had the guava juice. In addition, we get treated with some pineapple tart cookies. Yummy.

I had this Garupa Fillet Teppanyaki served with rice. Well, it was rather plain simple though. Just a bunch of bean sprout and then a few slices of fish fillet with a cup of plain rice. And the fish fillet was like baked in the oven instead of grilled on the Tepanyaki pan. If you wanted to know how this thing tastes, well, it was just so-so only lah.
You get what you pay for and it is really true in this case.

This is the Teppanyaki Fried Udon Cuttle Fish. There are ample of Udon noodle and cuttle fish too making it a very filling dish. The taste is rather mild and I’m sure it would taste much better with a few more drops of Teriyaki and Soy sauce on it.

Serve along with the dishes is some Sambal Chilli which is kicking hot. Sambal chilli is certainly Japanese and I ain’t sure how they had this idea but I guess they just try to create another fusion between Japanese cuisines to our local favor.

Here is our local kind of Wasabi, our infamous Kampung Koh chilli sauce, hahaha! Ask you die or not.

The bill sum up to RM31.00 and the cashier didn’t mind treating us another 2 pieces of Cloud9 Lemon Tea candy. So sweet.

Overall, the food here is just normal. Though it is below my expectation of what a Teppanyaki should be but the price explain everything.

This is a place for those who want a taste of Teppanyaki-like dishes at a less throat-cutting price.
Also Note*
Unlimited refill of hot / cold Green Tea
No Pork
No Service Charge

Teppanyaki Fast Food Restaurant
27, Persiaran Greentown 7,
Pusat Perdagangan Greentown,
30450 Ipoh, Perak.
Located next to Yeolde English

Tel 05-2548136

GPS Location: 4°35'57"N 101°5'47"E

Whats in their mind man! Imposing petrol price by car size?

At first, I was thinking hard what is the objective that the government want to achieve by implementing this rule?
Reducing big cars or reducing the fuel consumption? Or is this another way for the government to make additional profit (they call it subsidy reduction whatever it is).

This rule will give a deeper slash to the Rakyat regardless they're rich or poor. When you talk about big car, it simply doesn't mean only the rich drive a big car. The rich will drive a brand new big car while the lower income group drive a rather old but still a big car. It isn't uncommon to see people who earn about RM2000 a month drive a Honda Accord or Toyota Camry or even a Merc or Beemer with engine capacity above 2000cc, just that they're used vehicle from older model and they're affordable. So, does that mean they deserve to be penalise with higher petrol price simply because they choose to drive a cheap old car?

And you know what, they already pay a hefty price on the road tax. Road tax for a typical car above 2500cc cost more then 10 times than a car with half the capacity. That is already a one tight slap to the owner and now, another slap with the fuel price. That certainly going to hurt.

Lets look at our premium paid for petrol car road tax
1000cc = RM20
1300 = RM70
1600 = RM90
2000 = RM380
2500 = RM880
3000 = RM2130
3500 = RM4380

The Loopholes

Just look at the 20 liter fuel limitation for foreign vehicle implemented recently. Just how can you ensure the foreign vehicle really only fill 20 litre of fuel before leaving the country. It is barely possible to control that. They can simply jump around from one station to another station pumping 20 litre each and fill up the tank to max before leaving. And then they have this credit card payment which they can't get control of. So, what is the effectiveness that come in place at the end. None.

It just going to be the same if the government impose higher price to big car. One can simply get a smaller car and fill it up with cheaper fuel and then transfer the fuel to their larger vehicle. Now, that doesn't mean you got to buy a small car, just go borrow it from someone.

On top of that, it also open another illegal business channel to the society. Runner could buy cheap petrol with small vehicle and the sell it to the big car owner with some fees. It sure going to be a lucrative business since big cars are everywhere now. I doubt the government could get control over these sort of activities.

Environment concern

People around the world is talking about global warming and cutting down carbon emission nowadays. While having this implementation may not seems to help much in reducing carbon emission, the government must play a strong role in conserving the environment. Just look at our capital city KL, you barely see a clear blue sky on most of the day along the year. The air are always filled with smoke. Although our country has not reach among the world's top country of carbon emission, we shouldn't be waiting until the day arrive and then only start implementing all sort of things in a hurry, that will be too late.

China is among the top carbon emitter, I been there before and witnessed how bad the environment could be when you have so much pollution going on.
The whole day looks like as it was evening when the sun is about to set.

One of the prevention measure taken by China was the implementation of electric bike to replace the gasoline engine bike. With hundreds of millions of petrol bike already on the road, it is a steep implementation that doesn't comes easy at first but today, you will see most of the bike in China run on electric motor. By eliminating most of the petrol bike on the road, it sure slash down a significant amount of carbon emission to the environment.

I strongly believe Malaysia should also follow the footstep implementing the electric bike here. It is environmentally clean and safer. I remember we have tried to bring in the electric bike in the recent year. Its the same type of electric bike I saw in China but then, it cost nearly 3 times of what found in China.

Thats ridiculous! The bike cost about the same price than the petrol based bike, just who do you think wanted to buy it?
I think they must have imposing 200% import tax on those bikes.

Other than environment friendly, the electric bike are also safer than its petrol sibling. You wont see people riding an electric bike in highway at 200km/h or doing the Superman or whatever-man stunts or in the city which make our infamous Mat Rempit so popular in this region. We have seen more and more powerful small bikes introduced into the market over the recent years and so as the crime which related to these bikes.

The government should be more serious and do better in conserving the environment but this double standard fuel price system certainly not helping.

Before I knew it, the government announced that we got to use our Mykad at the petrol station to buy petrol. I think this is to curb the fuel smuggling activities at the border state so I hope this will only be implemented at the border state area. I just can't imagine that we come to a stage where "No Mykad, No Petrol". WTF!

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