Merry Christmas 2007!

Merry Christmas everyone! Spent Christmas eve actually shopping for nursery paint in Lowes, it was a wonderful feeling to not bump into everyone and their brothers trying to panic shop at the very last minute! Lowes was actually a ghost town, compared to the other big name retailers like W-Mart across the street, where cars were lining up to find a parking spot!
Interesting thing about paint these days, is that they have a special no "VOC" version, which apparently baby-safe. I guess those years of licking paint off my wall in Klang didn't do much for my intelligence then.... ;)

Christmas Day lunch, we hung out in another ghost town. This time at the Plaza. Other than M&S Grill, which we had reservations for, I don't think any other place had their front doors unlocked. Just like Thanksgiving dinner, it was nice for Christmas luncheon to not have to worry about cooking and cleaning up. Food at M&S wasn't too bad, but the waiter dude really seemed like he partied a little too hard on Christmas Eve, and he seemed a little snippy too cos we ordered some large portions to share... Looks like someone might have got some coal in their socks this year! Here's a picture of yours truly after sneaking in some sriRacha sauce on my fish and chips! BTW, the Sriracha sauce was really for our main event later....

After food, we adjourned to Clarice's place for her annual popiah party (REAL FOOD). It was really really good. As usual, I put too much filling in my Malaysian-Burrito, so had to double-bag the popiah most of the time. Too bad we didn't get any pictures, too busy eating to worry about that!

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Studying for a test

"Should I have cheesecake tonight?", she asked. "Probably not a good idea leh, with your test coming up. Gotta study for it right?", i replied smugly... It was balmy and cold Thursday night, a far cry from her special extra day in warm and sunny San Francisco, and more importantly the eve of the dreaded pregnancy diabetes drink test.
For the uninitiated, the next day, we were due for Yeesin's first pregnancy diabetes test. It was a very simple sugar drink that she had to consume 1 hr before her OB appointment where they would draw some blood to test her sugar level. If you "fail" that one, they you get the pleasure of having to go to a 5 hour long test, which from what Terri and Clarice tell us, is NOT FUN at all.
So, on the eve of the test, we have had 2+ days of eating with austerity, no KFC, no Mickey D's, and most definitely no cheesecake! Frankly, studying for this test was no fun at all! At least in school, we could chomp on oily and sweet stuff while cramming for exams!
Results come out next week, so crossing our fingers!

* UPDATE - 12/27 and counting... No call yet from the doctor... I think we passed!

Ice Ice Baby + Bach'ing It

Its that time of year in KC again, where instead nice flurry snowflakes, we get honking loads of ice!!! As usual, the all the local TV stations have sold this as the storm of the century, as everyone clamors to come up with an adjective even more fear inspiring than the other guy in front of the weatherman/woman blue screens. This is Jermain to this blog because Yeesin had another quick business trip to Sunny San Francisco, and as a result of this huge Midwestern Ice Storm was stranded over there today when her flight was cancelled!




So, while the rest of KC is enjoying the picture on the left, she gets to stay another day in Sunny SF, to enjoy this other picture on the right! So when the weather handed her a flight cancellation lemon, she made some shopping lemonade strolling the stores around Union Square today. Our little trooper was lucky enough to meet with another fellow peapod buddy [pregnant lady] and they spent the day shopping at GAP, and hanging out in general... :)


So, again i'm hanging out with Benji tonight, or as my co-workers call it - Bach'ing it. Tired of Mickey D's and KFC already, so I'm going to try something dangerous, and cook some curry chicken. Now for those of you that know me from college will probably remember my famous (or rather infamous) baked curry ala barbecue sauce chicken! One of my most prized recipes both for is rich flavor and more importantly for its ease of cooking, I was tempted to recreate this masterpiece tonight. Actually, i decided against it. (I can some people sighing in relief when they read this). Instead, I'm going to try Curry Chicken the normal way, with an instant packet..... If I make it through to post next week, you'll know that my stomach survived the trauma of cooking for myself. Until then... I'll be missing my BOO who is stuck in San Francisco!


* UPDATE - Weds. Yeesin's back safely in KC, and my stomach survived! YA!!!!!!

Birthday Weekend @ Las Vegas

Happy Birthday Yeesin! Actually, this past weekend had me posting bits and pieces of this Blog from our Las Vegas Caesar's Palace room while waiting for Yeesin to gets out on break from her week long class over here. Basically, I played tag along this weekend since she had a class here and it was also her birthday weekend.

Flying in took longer than expected, rain storms hitting Las Vegas. Raining in the desert is kinda like Snow in Texas.... it screwed up traffic, on the ground AND in the air. So, we had to sit in Denver for a 4 hr delay while Las Vegas airport was shut down to just one runway for the rains.... Still, the delays were long enough to make the rest of the night more exciting! We had tickets to Zumanity at 10.30pm, but we landed at 9pm. Yeesin was chatting with a guy in the next aisle and managed to score us a limousine ride to the hotel to save us some time....


9.45pm, arrived at the hotel, standing in line to check in. Funny how you never seem to get a short line when you're going to be late for something? 10.00pm, finally get our room key, but discover that the room is like 10 minutes walk away from the reception desk. BTW, we forgot how huge these Vegas hotels are. 10.21pm, finally at the Taxi stand, got a cab and off to New York New York hotel. 10.28pm, at the WILL CALL line got our Tickets! PHEW!!! 10.30pm sharp! in our seats, in the 2nd row in front of the stage. SWEET! Guess if we missed the show we would be so kicking ourselves.... 11pm halfway through the show, we notice people still coming in late, and taking their time to get to their seats... So much for the drama earlier. Note to self, next time we can take it easy to get to any Vegas shows, apparently they don't take their mandatory attendance 1 hr BEFORE the show very seriously!



Its been 4 years since we've been to Vegas, so I forgot how good the casinos are at taking your money. With the flashy blinking lights, and the happy sounding "ding ding ding", the siren call of the machines just lull you into playing them. $5 basically lasts about 5 minutes if you're not careful. We watched while YS's co-worker started with $20 in a penny machine, and after a couple of wins, got sucked to into betting higher, and was up $100 after only 10 minutes! After that peak though, @ $3.00s per bet, she was in danger of losing it all. Luckily she had a system where she took out her winnings and put a portion back into the machine... if not that $100 and the original $20 would have been gone in a flash! Gotta hand it to the Casinos, they are really good at what they do... :)


Penny slots are good for something though, a good way to get comp'ed drinks...While I personnaly didn't have a lucky gene in my entire body, i figured out how to work the system. So, my best business plan was to play $1-2 worth of 1 cent slots, and order any mixed drink that I want, after a $1 tip... VOILA! a $3 drink. AWESOME!



The rest of the weekend, we spent just walking around the rest of the Strip. Not much has changed on the Strip since our last visit here immediately after our wedding, so didn't do much major sightseeing. Did get a chance to stroll by Paris Paris, the Venetian, and the sights around Caesar's Palace, so got to relive some of our Euro vacations from a few years ago. Check out this side by side shot of Venice vs the Venetian! [Hint, the one in Vegas has a casino in the background - The Mirage!]

Sitting @ McClaren, waiting for my plane now. I get back to KC first, while Yeesin gets to hang out in Vegas for a couple more days in Vegas for her class... Happy LV Weekend Yeesin!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy thanksgiving all! If the last posting was semi-cryptic, then maybe it'll be easier to explain in this post. We ARE PREGNANT with a cute little baby girl due in March of 08'! I want to take this Thanksgiving moment to reflect a little on how blessed we are to have a little one coming along, with the ups and downs of our life a few years ago all but a bad memory, the event of a little addition to our family is something that we are truly thankful for!

We spent Thanksgiving night at the Plaza, with dinner at Figlio's for $20 each. A bargain in comparison to the other places that were offering $50+ prices per head! (Gotta use the savings for someone else now!). After a full dinner, we timed it just right to catch the Plaza lighting ceremony with fireworks. Basically, same deal as last year, except we had to find an open bathroom to use cos our little one got excited after the fireworks and decided to use Yeesin's bladder as a trampoline.... Starbucks was kind enough to allow everyone to use their bathrooms that night, and luckily too, cos the Plaza people forgot to order ANY porta potties! Go figure right? 20K+ people in one place, and no porta-potties in sight?

Anyways... Happy Thanksgiving all!

Download in progress.. ETA March 2008

Spain - Parte Tres - Barcelona

The final part of our Spanish adventure ends here in the great seaside city of Barcelona! After a 4.5 hour AVE ride from Madrid with no incident, we dropped our bags off at our hotel, and set off to see Sagrada Familia, or "The Holy Family" in Catalan. Its a awesomely huge church designed by Antoni Gaudi that has been under construction since 1882. So, close to 125+ years later, you can still see huge cranes working on the exterior, while masons are busy working on the insides. This place has been 100% funded by public donations via the entrance fee as Gaudi did not want any of local taxpayers money to be used for religious purposes, which explains the slow pace of work. Hopefully in our lifetime, we get to see it completed one day! More on the Sagrada Familia here.

Walking around the Gothic Quarter (Barri Gothic), one of the original parts of early Barcelona, we stumbled across this gem of a store... Not the kind of pills you have in mind! This place had a huge assortment of all kinds of candies, lined up from the front door to the back of the store. The name sure is an effective way to get people to take a look! Yeesin got a sugar high just standing outside the place!

Gaudilicious! A few afternoons later, we spent a rainy afternoon outside at Parc Guell, another one of Gaudi's creations. Built at the stop of a hill in Barcelona, it took 2 Bus rides to get there, but the view from the top was awesome, despite the cloudy skies. The picture on the right is a good sample of some of the architecture seen at the Parc. More on Parc Guell here.

Interestingly enough, the word "Gaudy" which usually means tasteless or vulgar, really comes from from the Latin word "gaudium" which means enjoyment! I just think poor Gaudi sometimes gets a bad name for being slightly more unconventional than most people! The pic on the left is from the top of Gaudi's old house (Casa Mila). Still a functioning apartment complex, this whole building was designed by Gaudi to be both functional and Gaudy looking! From the roof top, the clusters of the 5 figures with helmets are really chimneys, and the huge marble looking statue on the right really hides a water tower... like i said - Gaudilicious!

What would a trip to Barcelona be without a visit to its hometown genius' - Picasso! Probably one of the best art museums that we have visited! Its not has huge and imposing as the Lourve in Paris, but not too small that you're done in 15 minutes either. This place painstakingly shows you in chronological order Picasso's works from his youth, his journey through experimenting with other different styles (like impresionism), and finally to his abstract phase in life!

Cortados!

I will sign off the conclusion of our trip with a bad habit I've picked up over there! Cortados, which is equivalent to a double-shot espresso with foamed milk on top was my fav drink over there. Where Cafe con Leche (coffee with Milk) is the most common drink for breakfast, Cortados are perfect picker-uppers anytime after lunch! Hmmm... Yummy..... :) Adios!

Spain - Parte Dos - Madrid

Now for this week, back to our 2 part of our Spain vacation in Madrid! Our train ride to back to Madrid was decidedly less hurried than the one to Sevilla. A short 2 hr journey later, we were plopped into the Atocha Station, which by the way was connected conveniently to Madrid's subway system. Spent a total of 4 nights in Madrid, so we had plenty of time to see the major sights like the Prado Museum, the Renia Sofia, and even a bullfight too! In general, Madrid was more of a bustling metropolitan city to us, compared to Sevilla which was more of a laid back walking town. Here's a shot of Madrid at 9.30pm, note the huge traffic jam at the bottom of the shot, stark contrast of downtown KC!






First day up, we went for a stroll in the Royal Palace. Its actually still being used for Royal functions today, much like Buckingham Palace in London... But fortunately for us, the Spanish Royal Family wasn't using it that day, so we got to walk around inside and admire their century old future and a weirdly huge collection of clocks and old & large self-portraits of previous kings. No cameras inside the Royal palace, so the best we could do was an outside shot!





We were the fortunate beneficiaries of a hotel date mix up with our travel agent. After a minor inconvenience of having to pay for our hotel room with a separate credit card, we did in fact score the a suite on the highest floor! It came with a patio overlooking the streets below us too! Here's a quick shot from the rooftop patio. During the day and night we could see people walking on the streets below. BTW, we also saw a couple of "working ladies" on the streets too, which unfortunately is part of any large metropolitan city in the world these days. Interestingly though, it is apparently illegal to pimp in Spain, so all of the ladies down below were private contractors publicly working out the arrangements with their clients in clear view....




A wonderful snack that we discovered over in Madrid was Churros! For those of you that are familiar with the Costco sold Churros with sugar and cinnamon, its kinda like that except without the sweet part. For the Malaysians, its like a less greasy Yau-Cha-Guai. It goes REALLY -REALLY well with melted chocolate (as depicted here), or alternatively you can also dip it into Coffee + Sugar in the morning Malaysian Style MMMMHHHMMMMM.... :) BTW, best place to eat Churros con Chocolate in Madrid is at Chocolatería Valor in Downtown. Also, don't plan on sleeping anytime soon for the next 4-5 hrs with all that sugar!

Continuing on with food, Paella is something that you shouldn't miss as well in Spain. It tastes a bit like Asian fried rice except its slightly more yellowish and a lot more watery. Probably not as appetizing any more after that description, but I assure everyone, it tastes better that it sounds! Here's a shot of Yeesin about to attack our Seafood Paella. BTW, Patio dining was amazing out there, with weather in the low 70s most of the time we were there, so plenty of opportunity to sit outside, grab a bite, and people watch for hours!

We didn't forget to scratch the shopping itch over in Madrid either. One morning we made a pilgrimage to the shopping gods by taking a subway ride over to El Rastro, probably the largest flea market in Spain! Don't expect any rare or priceless hand made art here. El Rastro only carries mass produced cheap T-shirts, CDs, belts, shoes, etc! At prices from 2-10 Euros, its a bargain shoppers paradise! Also known for its pickpockets, we kept our hands on our wallets, and shopped to our hearts delight! Yeesin bought a few Pashminas from a kind Spain stall owner that kinda looked like your neighborhood friendly uncle. Didn't really know much what he said, but he was constantly draping the pashminas over Yeesin, telling them how largo (long), grande (big), and how barato (cheap) they were!

Will close out this edition with a parting photo of a bullfight that we managed to catch over in Madrid. Bullfighting is probably the only thing that we didn't really care for in Spain. We went there trying not to judge the local culture and ways of life, but in our minds, bullfighting seemed to be more a of tourist thing that a local sport. I'll walk everyone through the sequence of a fight. Part one, the bull is led out into the ring, and 6-8 guys in matador outfits take turns to bait it, make it mad, and tire it out. Part two, the picadores, guys on horses and with spears come out and plunge spear points into the neck of the bull to enrage it even more. Finally part three is when the main matador of the event comes out on stage with the red flag and his sword. By then the bull is REALLY mad, tired, and bleeding as it tries to gore the matador. The matador does his red flag thing with the bull that most of us already seen on TV, and when the moment is right (this part rarely shows up on ESPN), plunges the sword into top part of the bull's neck, if he is good, the bull dies immediately. If not, as in our 2nd bullfight, the it gets really really messy, cos he has to try and try again. So in short, not as entertaining as we expected, we left after the 2nd fight, and frankly a little unfair to the bulls, as they don't have any way to fight back!!!

Next time.... Barcelona!

A Morning Run

Taking a break from the vacation report this week to take in my 5K run this morning via the KC Marathon... Woke up at the wee hours of 5.15am to get ready for this race. Adrian picked me up at 6, and we met up with Egwin, Rach, Minh & their friend Gabe to start the run at downtown Crown Center

Did a respectable time of 26.24 this time around, a little slower compared to my previous record of 25.57 in 2005. The KC Marathon technology was pretty impressive though, with timing chips provided that hooked up to our shoes. Just a step on a red plate on the ground at the starting point, and a final step on the plate at the finishing line records your time. No worries about making sure the event staff right down your number and time correctly!

Spent the rest of the morning sitting on my butt recovering... BTW, just got emailed some pictures from my finish line shot... here they are!

Spain - Parte Uno - Sevilla

Whew! 10 nights, 11 days of trains, airplanes, subway rides, taxi trips, countless miles of daily walking, and most importantly tons of FUN and bucketloads of photos later... we back!!!! We had an awesome vacation, though we are happy to be able to read menu's without a Spanish dictionary again, and finally able to understand local TV broadcasts!


We'll blog the cities we visited over the next few weeks, starting with Seville or Sevilla as the locals call it! On the right, was our first day of arrival in in Sevilla with the Giralda tower in the background. For those of you guys in KC, you'll probably recognize this from the belltower next to the Cheesecake factory on the Plaza... After all, Sevilla and Kansas City are sister cities!!!


Nothing like being almost late for our train ride to start our hearts pumping for our adventure. Our first stop was in Seville actually came by way of Madrid. After landing in Madrid late at 9am, our Spanish driver drove formula-one style weaving in and out of traffic to make our 10am train ride from Madrid to Sevilla. Kinda reminds us of our Genting to KL taxi driver, except the cursing was in Spanish, and he was dressed WAY better, and his Mercedes was more STYLO. Still, he got us there with 15 minutes to spare, giving me just enough time to to navigate the language barrier and get our tickets validated, jump on the Train, and finally relax.


Speaking of the language barrier, we actually trained a little via Spanish language CDs in preparation for this trip. Nothing too fancy really, just basic travelling Spanish, enough to check into hotels, get transportation, order food, and find the bathroom. Interesting thing to note though for those of you that know Mexican Spanish, it differs slightly from Spanish Spanish. For Example, Cerveza "ser-ve-sa" is Mexican Spanish, while its pronounced "Ther-ve-tha", kind of like saying the word with a lisp. Different huh? Interesting myth stating that the "Spanish Lisp" came from a king that had a speech disability, unable to pronounce "s" properly he Lisp'ed his way through conversations. More on it here.




Nickelback sings "... And a bathroom I can play baseball in. And a king size tub big enough for ten plus me." Well, under the Sevilla Alcazar (Castle), the "Baths of Lady María de Padilla" are really rainwater tanks named after Maria de Padilla. Supposedly, King Pedro fell for María and had her husband killed (Talk about eliminating the competition!). María resisted his advances and in turn poured boiling oil over her face to disfigure herself to stop Pedro's pursuit (ouch). I guess Talk-to-the-hand wasn't invented yet??!!... Later she became a nun and is respected as a symbol of purity in Sevilla. I took this picture as an sweet background for my desktop.

OOOhhhh...Macarena!!! Unbeknown est to the poor church goers at Basillica de la Macarena in Sevilla, a local pop group called Los del Rio launched this greatest one-hit wonder hit song in 1995. Unfortunately, that darn song kept playing in my head as I strolled through this church, which hold Sevilla's most holy image. the Virgin of Hope - "La Macarena". Her claim to fame is her signature glass teardrops across her face, where her procession put her up on a 3-ton float to parade around Seville. Another item of note, she is the Patron of local the bullfighters, where a local bullfighter Joselito spent a fortune buying 4 emeralds for her. Too bad the favor wasn't reciprocated... He was gored to death in the bullring later. BTW, the she kept the emeralds.

And yours truly will be willing to take credit for a most fortunate event that happened on the 27th. As the sign on the left can attest, I timed our trip just perfectly to coincide with the World Day of Tourism. Short story so that we can move along, is entry to the Church and Giralda Tower was Free, aka Gratis!

Next the Giralda Tower (La Giralda), one of the most recognizable landmarks of Sevilla. You can pretty much see it from everywhere in town. The version in KC is pretty much a miniature version of the one at Sevilla. The tower used to be part of an ancient mosque, and when the Christians invaded, instead of tearing it down, they merely added a bell tower at the top. To this day, the bells actually do sound on a regular basis. The climb to the top was pretty tiring but interestingly enough there are actually no steps, just a steep walkway that winds itself around the tower until the top. The history behind it is the the Moors used to ride their horses from the ground floor all the way up to the top for the daily prayers instead of walking. That's what I call being efficient! Here's a pic from the top of the tower!

Finally, last but not least, the Star Wars fans in you guys will definitely appreciate the following fine location that we visited next, Plaza Espana a.ka. "Naboo" in Star Wars II - Attack of the Clones. Its original purpose, before hijacked by George Lucas was for the 1929 Spanish-American Exhibition and is a perfect example of Moorish Revival type architecture.... Personally, I think Naboo sounds more interesting, as we're more of movie buffs than architecture ones! It doesn't even take any imagination to see how this location works out great as the set for the movie!

In next week's Blog... Madrid!

Packing our bags, off to see the sights!

Well, its that time of the year again, where we pack our bags for another long vacation. In usual fashion, we're packing light, with only 2 carry ons each, so that we can hop on and off our transportation with minimum luggage lugging time. This time round, we've set our sights on the fair land of Spain, where it should really rain "mainly on the plain" or maybe it's "plane". Either case, I've got a compact umbrella packed so, we should are covered!

The flight to Madrid is just days away, and we're just waiting for the last pile of laundry to get done so that we can close up the bag and relax for the rest of the week. Our itinerary will take us actually to 3 nights in Seville first after we land in Madrid via a high-speed AVE train ride. Then 4 nights back in Madrid, followed by another 3 more nights in Barcelona to complete out our trip. Looking forward to a great time over in Spain.. Will be blogging again when we get back!

Clean Scan & Light the Night!

So we had my bi-annual Cancer screening results last Friday, and the scan came back clean! :) This time round, instead of the usual PET/CT, which personally I think is really uncomfortable, my oncologist and us decided to go with just a CT instead. So, in place of having to sit perfectly still for more than 1 hour, I only needed to get injected with a CT dye! Still, the contrast dye does have an interesting side effect of having a laxative included with it to make sure that the dye exits the body in a quick manner. So, I think of it as a free colon-cleansing session complimentary with the cancer screening! Eh! other people pay good money for this kind of thing! Anyways, the results were boring medically, which is how we want it to be, and we were in and out of the doctor's office after a brief chit-chat with my onco...

That same night, we went to see the fruits of our labor @ the 2007 Light-The-Night event in Corporate Woods. Weather was a little on the Chilly side (low 60's), but we felt really good seeing the kits that we put together from the previous week going to a good cause! Generally, it was a good party like atmosphere with kids everywhere, and enough pop and sugar to sustain them for most of the night! The Lighting of the balloons was particularly beautiful as the blinking red balloons and white balloons lit up the night sky.... There was a pang of sadness as it reminded us of the tough time that we had a few years ago, and for us, putting our lives now in better perspective. We hung around until the crowd started to make their walk, leaving the event feeling really good that we could do a little to help everyone out that night!

Here's a little video of us that night!

Have you ever seen so many batteries?

We've never seen so many AA batteries in one place before yesterday evening! We stopped by the local Lymphoma and Leukemia society Chapter to pick up a Light the Night volunteer package earlier in the afternoon. Basically the task is to pre-assemble a Light-the-Night balloons in preparation from the local walk on September 14th.

For the unfamiliar Light-the-Night is an annual charity event where people basically take battery lighted balloons and walk relay-style to raise money to fight blood cancers. So anyway, back to the hundreds of batteries.... The batteries go into a little red holder, then the light fixture goes into the balloons stacked up on the picture on the right. How many of these will we work on? Lets see, each battery box has 630 each, and I've got 2 boxes.. So I'm guessing about 600+ depending on how many defects we find in the assembly process.

The final product? This is what it looks like.

Basically the balloons will get inflated during the night's event. So anyway on this Labor Day weekend, we'll probably be busy working on these... Still, its a great feeling to be able to give back after what we've been through a few years ago. Hopefully our work goes to helping more people out!

You gotta be kidding me ??!!

So, its been a while since I last posted. Today's short piece is about Credit Card Fraud. Unfortunately, someone decided to use my AMEX to make a few small purchases on the internet in the last week! I'm not sure how they got a hold of my credit card number but they apparently had a method to their madness!

Beginning on 8/12, looks like they charged small $1-$5 charges on internet sites, mainly membership fees to see if anyone would notice. Then came a few an order of Stamps.com software, probably so they can print stamps from the comfort of their own home... So, at least I know this thief is internet and semi-technology savvy.

Probably the one that puzzled me the most was an order on Columbiahouse DVD for like 6 DVD's. The puzzling part is they shipped the order to my place! Certainly not very savvy in that department! I do know that this person has varied interests in his/her movie watching though - Among the DVDs were Pursuit of Happyness, Freedom Writers, Happy Feet, Bobby, Norbit and Good Shepard. So, if I were to venture a guess, like dramas & has a family. Definitely NOT the movies that I would buy. I probably would fall asleep like 5 minutes into Freedom Writers...

So anyways, 1 week and multiple calls to AMEX and these online places later, i think I'm finally done with cleaning up the credit card mess that this person made! I'm still mad a this fella for making go through all this hassle of disputing his/her charges!!!

Brain Food

Saturday morning was mainly a long dreary downpour of rain, and yet more rain. We decided to cook up a storm at home! After that bad experience at that Singapore place in LA farmers market, Yeesin wanted to show me how Otak-Otak (Brain-Brain) was properly made.

Unlike it's name suggests, no brains go into the recipe, yet i'm still boggled how it can be called literally "lots-of-brains"!

Anyway, i don't have the exact recipe, and i was in charge of the blending and cleanup, but it sure tasted GOOD! Best part was adding otak-otak into rice, and mixing them throughly together.... HMMMHMM... Here's a couple of before and after pictures!