Singapore is just a stone’s throw from Malaysia. From KL, it’s 45 minutes away by flight, 4 hours by car, 5-6 hours by bus. But once you cross the border from Johor either via the perennially congested Causeway or the newer but less used Second Link, despite many similarities in the two countries, you *will* know you are in Singapore.
Malaysia-Singapore border
These are just 10 ways (out of hundreds!) that can help you determine when you’ve already crossed the Malaysia-Singapore border:-
- The speed limit in the freeway is only 90km/hr. It seems such a shame to see shiny expensive cars with powerful engines driving at snail’s pace in the highways. Speed cameras are everywhere and speeding fines are steep, so no one dares to overspeed…until these very same Singaporean cars cross the border into Johor and feel the exhilaration of driving at the 120km/hr allowable limit. As expected, many of these cars go beyond the speed limit. Even if they get caught, I suppose RM300 doesn’t cause quite a dent in the Singaporean’s pockets, considering that RM300 is only about S$130, hardly exorbitant by Singaporean standards. But I digress. Moving on…
- Road signs start to get perplexing. PIE. ECP. AYE. (Pan Island Expressway. East Coast Parkway. Ayer Rajah Expressway. Respectively, of course.)
Singapore road signs
- High-rise condominiums sprout like skyscrapers everywhere. Singapore has very little land, so housing developers have little option for expansion other than building higher and higher.
- Very few people speak Malay. With the Singaporean population comprising mainly of Chinese (75% to be exact), most of them hardly speak any Malay. It’s a huge contrast to most Chinese Malaysians who can carry on a pretty decent conversation in Malay. Even the 14% Malay population living in Singapore are more likely to speak English than Malay.
- Escalators move at a much faster rate — proof that pace of life in Singapore is much faster than Malaysia! [NB: A good friend of mine told me that even hair seems to fall off at a more rapid rate in Singapore. She's not sure if it's because of the water, the weather, or the stress.]
- Bus stations are equipped with signboards that indicate the times of arrival of various buses, e.g. 8:12, 8:15, 8:18. And more surprisingly, the buses arrive as per the stated times. As they say on that now defunct Ripley’s show, “Believe…or not!”
- The Walk/Don’t Walk signs feature skinnier images. Perhaps a subliminal message from the Singaporean government to promote a healthier lifestyle?
- In lieu of the Petronas Twin Towers, you’ll see this massive durian-like building instead.
Singapore Esplanade
Image from Cokeworld Citizen
- Pork is sold openly everywhere. In Malaysia, most eating establishments are halal or, at the very least, pork-free. Pork is normally found in Chinese restaurants or stalls only. Not in Singapore — you’ll see it in food courts, restaurants, malls, everywhere!
- You’ll see couples showing…uh…more physical contact openly in the MRT. With Malaysia being predominantly a Muslim country, such public display of affection is not something that you normally see in Malaysia’s LRTs or elsewhere.
Tags: Singapore
Welcome to the Prince Court Medical Centre, Malaysia’s internationally-accredited private healthcare facility.
The hospital is located right in the heart of KL’s central business district, just a stone’s throw from major shopping centres (Pavilion and Star Hill), Kraftangan (KL Craft Complex), and several embassies (US, Indonesia, Japan, Philippines, Switzerland).
The moment you walk into its ginormous lobby, it’s inevitable to get confused. For a moment, you’ll find yourself thinking you’ve just stepped into a hotel instead of a hospital.
Goodness gracious! They even have a concierge right by the entrance of the hotel…uh…I mean, hospital.
The hallways are tastefully decorated with lighting fixtures and small paintings. You start to wonder if you’ve come to the right place to visit your sick friend.
You start to feel better when you see something that resembles a hospital, at long last. Most hospitals that I’ve seen in KL don’t have wall-to-wall carpeting in the hallways though…
Et naturellement, the hospital bed is state-of-the-art. I’m sure you noticed there’s yet another painting on the wall, recessed lighting, a built-in wardrobe, and more wall-to-wall carpeting.
If you’re lucky, you just might get a room with a view of the world’s tallest twin towers:
Luxury comes at a price, of course. And since I’m the type who needs to know how much everything costs, Prince Court is probably not the hospital for me ;)
……………………….
Prince Court Medical Centre
39, Jalan Kia Peng
50450 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Hotline: +603 2160 0000
Fax: +603 2160 0010
http://www.princecourt.com
I used to do my grocery shopping every Saturday but all that has changed ever since the Selangor government introduced No-Shopping-Bags-Day every Saturday.
Now don’t get me wrong here. I’m all for protecting the environment. I just feel that the Malaysian government can do a lot more than simply banning supermarkets and hypermarkets from giving away plastic bags with which shoppers can carry their purchases in.
It’s a self-defeating exercise. At least for now. For one, it’s only every Saturday. So now I do my grocery shopping on any day except Saturday, except for emergencies. Which is what most Malaysians are doing, as well. Grocery shopping on Saturdays are actually quite a pleasure now that there are no crowds nor long queues at the checkout counter.
And just because it’s No-Shopping-Bags-Day doesn’t mean that consumers aren’t getting any plastic bags at all. Innovative shoppers use those free transparent bags used for putting in vegetables or fruits. Yes, the ones that come in rolls, usually found hanging over vegetable and fruit bins. [NB: In most Malaysian supermarkets, you get to pick your vegetables and fruits, place them in those plastic bags, then take them to the weighing station to be weighed and tagged with the price and barcode.] These bags are quite flimsy but they do a fairly decent job of making sure your purchases don’t tumble all over the car.
I’ve always been the type of person who’d carry her own shopping bags when grocery-shopping long before No-Shopping-Bags-Day every Saturday was even introduced. But the campaign has got me miffed because now it means I have to buy plastic garbage bags to line my garbage bins with. 
You see, those shopping bags are pretty useful as garbage bags; for keeping wet clothes in after a day in the swimming pool; to wrap your slippers before packing them into your luggage, to carry tae kwon do uniforms, extra shirts and project materials before placing them into your children’s bags; for putting in small items to bring to the office. These plastic shopping bags are actually one of the most re-used things in the world! They’re just getting such a bad rap from everyone. I mean, sure, plastic bags if not disposed of properly can go into waterways, into the oceans and ultimately choking an innocent dolphin. But the point is: so can many other materials, like those six-pack plastic rings that almost choked Lovelace to death in the movie ‘Happy Feet’.
In Europe, it’s the norm to bring your own shopping bags in supermarkets. And I don’t mind it there one bit. Why? Because in addition to such no-shopping-bags drive, the governments there are wholeheartedly into recycling. In Belgium for instance, they’ve set up a system whereby people can leave recyclable items outside their homes and shops, say, carton boxes every Friday (I don’t recall the exact day anymore), and a special lorry would come and pick it up and send it to a recycling centre.
In Malaysia, however, little is being done to promote recycling. There are recycling bins in certain areas but they’re not being maintained. You see them overflowing for weeks and weeks on end.
Malaysians are also not being educated enough because they dump all sorts of things into those bins, including food waste. Oh the shame of it!
There are also recycling centres in several places all over the city that accept segregated items like plastic and glass items. But they’re few and far-between, and do little to promote recycling because they pay such a measly amount for your recyclable materials. You end up spending so much time and petrol on several huge bags of recyclable items that fill up your entire car…only to find out that you only get RM3 (less than $1) for them at the recycling centre.
[NB: But we still continue our recycling effort at home, where we have 4 carton boxes -- one for plastic, one for paper, one for tetra paks (washed and dried before being flattened), and another one for tins. Try segregating your trash at home and you'll be dumbfounded with the mountain that you'll accumulate in just a week!]
What the Malaysian government should do (and all other governments while we’re at it) is to crack down on manufacturers’ packaging guidelines. There is a huge difference between protecting goods to be sold and going overboard with the packaging.
Just take a look at this package of pudding:-
The pudding comes in individual plastic cups. They’re arranged on a moulded plastic base. Then the whole package is shrink-wrapped. You don’t even have to do any calculation to figure out that you’re spending more on the packaging than on the product itself. And all of that packaging just goes to waste. You can’t reuse them in any way.
Have you bought a USB drive recently (a.k.a. thumb drives or pen drives)? Notice how they’re packed in those rigid moulded plastic packs that are so darn difficult to open up? There’s usually a cardboard enclosure inside, printed with the brand of the USB drive, plus a small manual which can be a single sheet or a miniature booklet, depending on the price of the USB drive. All those things — the rigid plastic pack, the cardboard enclosure, the instruction manual — all cost money, take up so much space in our dumpsites, and can never be reused. The only redeeming thing about it is that the cardboard and manual are made of paper and are biodegradable.
And don’t even get me started on packaging for beauty products!
In addition to cracking down on manufacturers, the Malaysian government should take more effort to educate people on recycling AND spend more money on recycling — putting in more recycling bins everywhere, making sure the recyclable items are being collected on a regular basis, then making sure there are sufficient facilities to do the actual recycling. Something should also be done about compostable materials, i.e. selling (or giving away?) affordable composting bins for households to use and/or promoting making your own fertilizer out of food scraps using earthworms. I know for a fact that those worms are being used in Malaysia right now to breakdown palm trunks and husks and convert them into fertilizer. I looked for those worms but they’re only available for big-time businessmen, not simple folk who’d like to do their part for the environment.
No-Shopping-Bags-Day can be a good thing if implemented everyday AND in tandem with many sustainable means of reducing, reusing and recycling. Until then, it’s only a case of ‘melepaskan batuk di tangga‘, i.e. doing something half-heartedly for the sake of being seen as doing something.
I’ve been intending to post this recipe since God-knows-when but have been putting it off for one simple reason: I didn’t have any step-by-step photos to post with it. Hence, my photo of a slice of this delectably moist carrot cake will have to do for now.
This cake is very easy to make and has always gotten me compliments every time I make it. (I even got orders for this cake! But I always have to turn them down because I don’t have the time to do it.) The only hard part is grating the carrots. After you’ve done that, everything else is a breeze.
Moist Carrot Cake
Ingredients:
• 4 eggs
• 1 1/4 cups vegetable oil
• 1 cup white sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 3 cups carrots, grated coarsely
• 1 handful walnuts, chopped coarsely (quantity can be increased, to taste)
• 1 handful of raisins (or to taste – don’t put too much: it will make the cake too sweet)
Ingredients for the frosting:
• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 8 ounces cream cheese, softened (1 box Philadelphia cream cheese or 1 tube of Tatura cream cheese)
• 2-4 cups confectioners’ sugar (TIP: start with 2 cups sugar; add sugar bit by bit if not sweet enough; 4 cups is too sweet for me; I usually use only 2)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Directions:
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease 2 round pans & line sides and bottom of pan with baking paper. (I don’t like the taste of the flour, so I don’t grease & flour my baking tins anymore.)
- In a large bowl, beat together eggs, oil, white sugar and 2 teaspoons vanilla.
- Mix in flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon.
- Stir in carrots.
- Fold in walnuts and raisins.
- Pour into prepared pans. Bake in the preheated oven for 40 to 50 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Let cool in pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack and cool completely.
To Make Frosting:
- In a medium bowl, combine butter, cream cheese, confectioners’ sugar and 1 teaspoon vanilla.
- Beat until the mixture is smooth and creamy.
- Frost the cooled cake.
IMPORTANT: The key to a moist carrot cake is baking it until just cooked, i.e. when you stick a toothpick in the centre, it comes out clean. I never really time my baking. I just wait for the a strong, yummy aroma to waft out of the oven. That usually signals that the cake’s done. Take a peek inside the oven; if the top of the cake looks set, open the oven and stick a toothpick in the centre. If some batter sticks to the toothpick, that means the cake is not ready yet. Close the oven door and wait for a few minutes. Remember: the longer the cake stays in the oven, the drier it gets.
Oh, and as for softening the butter and the cream cheese, just leave it out at room temperature for half an hour or so. Never put it in the microwave.
Finally, make sure the cake has cooled completely before you frost it. Otherwise, the cream cheese frosting will melt.
Garnish the top of the cake with almond slivers, if desired.
This recipe is based on Carrot Cake III from allrecipes.com. Here are the tweaks that I’ve made on the recipe over the years:
- I halve the sugar from 2 cups to just 1 cup, as I found the original recipe way to sweet for my (and most Malaysians’) taste.
- Since pecans cost a small fortune in Malaysia and are quite difficult to find, I substitute it with chopped walnuts.
- I add some raisins for added texture and flavour.
- I cut down the ground cinnamon from 2 teaspoons to just 1 teaspoon, as the children found the original recipe too overpowering.
- I also halve the confectioner’s sugar used for the frosting.
- I use 2 baking tins and make it a 2-layer cake, to cut down on the baking time. [NB: Cake slice in the photo only shows a single layer.]
Selamat mencuba! (Good luck!) :)
After 3 years of taking care of the twins and looking after the house and my children during my numerous business trips and late-night meetings, my Indonesian helper has gone back to her hometown. For good. On Mother’s Day.
DH flew with her, with the intention of easing her way out of the airport rather than having her go through the ’special’ TKI lane (TKI = ‘Tenaga Kerja Indonesia‘, i.e. Indonesian Workers). Alas, it was to no avail. The officers on duty were adamant on letting her undergo the ‘proper’ process, which entailed her going to a specially designated terminal, then boarding a specially designated van/bus in order to get home. To cut a long story short, she arrived in Jakarta airport 8am Sunday but reached her kampung (hometown) Monday morning at 3am.
I would have gone to Jakarta, as well. Unfortunately, my new helper’s visa’s not ready yet. So until she gets here, my blog will have to suffer the brunt of current got-my-hands-full-with-the-house-and-kids-so-I’m-grounded-and-can’t-fly-anywhere status.
So with DH in Indonesia and my mother off to a free medical screening until past noon Sunday, my Mother’s Day was spent cooped up inside the house the whole day with all 5 kids at home, spent in a whirl of domestic chores, details of which I shall not bore you with, other than to affirm that there’s no household dirt that bleach or baking soda can’t handle.
Despite all the scrubbing and cleaning and washing during the day, suddenly came inspiration at dinner time from the most unexpected source of all: a bowl of leftover mushroom soup (which I made from scratch) from the previous night. For some strange reason, I just felt so inspired to cook!
From that bowl of leftover mushroom soup, I whipped up a restaurant-style dish for the children — pan-fried dory served on a bed of fettuccine smothered in mushroom- basil sauce, accompanied by mushrooms which have been sauteed in garlic and butter, then garnished with a sprinkling of chopped fresh basil leaves.
I felt like Jamie Oliver as I made up the recipe as I went along. I felt like… like Michael Smith (from Chef At Home) who’d improvise after finding inspiration from the ingredients in his pantry. (If only I had Nigella Lawson’s stylists so that I’d still look fabulous even after all the chopping and stirring and bending over the hot stove!)
The verdict on my yet unnamed culinary creation was summed up by the silence during the entire meal, punctuation only by occasional “mmm’s” and exclamations of “Yummy!”as the kids slurped and chomped heartily on every morsel on their plates. The last of the sauce was scraped as clean as they could muster without resorting to licking their plates clean. At the end of the meal, OnlyGirl declared to me in all seriousness, “Mama, you should open a gourmet restaurant!” And suddenly, my Mother’s Day was just perfect.
Happy Mother’s Day to all mothers out there! With all the chaos that we have to juggle in our lives, everyday ought to be Mother’s Day! ;)
