MYP Award Ceremony 2013

Time really flies!

In the blink of an eye, RunForFunds is 10!

Whoa!

It seemed only yesterday when this project was first started. The only thing that reminded me of the years gone by was the number of migrations I had to make to move the RunForFunds website. It is now settling nicely at Facebook - RunForFunds and given the financial strength of the host, I think we are here to stay for a while.

Anyway, this year's Maximise Your Potential (MYP) award ceremony has been brought forward to March and likely to remain so in years to come.

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Dear friends,

This year we celebrate a major milestone.

Maximize Your Potential (MYP) program is 10 years old.

At the 2012 MYP award ceremony held last September, we celebrated the A-level success of Alfie Lim.

Alfie, a recipient at the inaugural MYP in 2004, secured a place in NUS Law.

This year, we celebrate the success of Tan Zhi Wei, our second batch of MYP recipients in 2005.

Zhi Wei scored 3A’s and 3B’s in the 2012 A levels and is now assessing university course options.

He is serving his BMT at the Naval Diving Unit and has agreed to address this year’s MYP receipts.

Let’s keep our fingers crossed he is able to book out (and don’t kena confined).


Details
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Date: 30th March 2013 (Sat).
Venue: Geylang Methodist School (Primary), 2nd floor Library.
Time: 1000 hr – 1130 hr


Come, meet and encourage the MYP recipients you have sponsored via the RunForFunds (RFF).

Your support has made a difference to more than 70 young lives in the past decade.

Visit the RunForFunds Facebook page to recap those magical MYP moments: https://www.facebook.com/RunForFunds

Please drop a comment here, email, whatsapp or SMS me to RSVP (for catering purposes).

Thanks for your continued support of the RunForFunds movement.


Blessings,

Adrian

p.s. this year we’re holding the MYP ceremony earlier so we can inspire the recipients earlier.

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- Voxeros

Half Ball Soda Crackers

Looks like my other blog at PangPuarLiap may have a sponsor!

Say hello to Give Half Ball Soda Crackers!

Hahahahah.....

- Voxeros

Instant Noodle Maker 3000

I am kinda busy today and the weather is really miserable today so much so I didn't feel like leaving the office to go for lunch.

So I got a cup noodle and use my Instant Noodle Maker 3000 to cook it.

Om nom nom nom nom.

p.s. If you want coffee flavoured noodles, leave the filter inside. Eek.

- Voxeros

今天去 Pontian!

It's a slow day for blog today and so I thought I share a tok-duck-kok session just for the heck of it.

Heh.

- Voxeros

Hong Kong Cafe Beverages

I was having breakfast at a local cafe in Hong Kong when I spotted a few unusual items on their beverage list.

1. 西洋菜蜜 - Watercress and honey. 

What? Vegetable in your drink? Wouldn't that be more of a soup than a beverage?

2. 滚水蛋 - Boiling water and egg. 

It is akin to our soft boiled egg except that it is served in a glass and topped up with boiling water. The variation is 奶水蛋 (right side of the picture right) where condensed milk is added to the concoction. I was wondering if you add boiling water to the soft boiled egg where you are supposed to stir the glass into a milky liquid, won't the taste be very bland?



3. 冻绿茶宾纳 - Iced Green Tea & Ribena.

宾纳 is short for 利宾纳 i.e. Ribena the blackcurrant cordial. These days we add green tea to everything from ice cream to biscuit to pumpkin seed to whisky.

Green tea to Ribena is definitely a first for me.

Weird!

Image Credit: http://www.ufood.com.hk

- Voxeros

My Pen Is Small

JayWalk (voxeros) on Twitter via kwout

Starmist was slow to pick up on the joke when I wrote that. Heh heh.

We were talking about pens and how I have this tendency to lose them.

That was until I found this little chequebook pen where it fits nicely in my pocket and never to lose another pen again.

Bought this at Kinokuniya (Ngee Ann City) and granted it is hard to write long essays with this pen due to its tiny size, one has to ask when was the last time anyone wrote anything substantial in length?

These days, it's the keyboard that rules the world of scribe.

- Voxeros

Spices

Of all the supermarkets that I visited during my trip to Kuala Lumpur last week.

AEON Big (formerly known as Carrefour) was my favourite and only because of this beautiful spices section.

I love spices. I love how these unassuming humble little things can send your taste buds to nirvana.

I like the open concept of spices in jars where you get to learn their names and at the same time take a whiff of the wonderful stuff.

Cinnamon, cumin, pepper, rempah, coriander seeds, star anise, etc. You name it, they have it!

- Voxeros

Hotel Gyms

I love hotel gyms and I make sure I pack my running gear whenever I travel on overseas trip.

First of all, if the hotel has a gym, it can't be too shabby to begin.

Still, there are the hotels with the token gym i.e. small little room with the bare essentials and possibly just one of each machine i.e. it's a one-man gym and two's a crowd.

My favourite is the one at Grand Millennium in Bangkok. It is a full sized gym with everything and there is a service attendant stationed at the gym. Oh and there is that super friendly service with a smile of the awesome Thai people!

So anyway, what I also like about hotel gyms is that you don't need to squeeze all your barang barang in tiny lockers and you get to shower in the comforts of your own room which is an elevator ride away.

Well, this recent one was at Dorsett Regency Hotel in Kuala Lumpur. It's an old hotel and it is one of those with the token gym of 1 treadmill, 1 elliptical machine, 1 bicycle and 1 universal machine. Which is fine as long as you are the only person there.

This gym open at 7am (which I thought was a tad late. All gyms should open at 6am or earlier!).

I made my way downstairs on the dot and was dismayed to see someone on the treadmill already. It was 7:05am and someone beat me to it. Dammit!

What surprised me was that he got off the machine and told me that he was done. The machine was all mine.

Wut?

5 minutes? That's it?

As it turned out, this chap was an old bird guest of the hotel and he said that while the official opening time of the gym is 7am, the gym is never locked i.e. you can come in anytime you want.

Damn. I should have gone to the gym at 6am then, instead of lying on my bed waiting for the clock to hit 7am.

Then again, it was a blessing in disguise coz I would have to wait for him till 7am to finish the treadmill, had I gone to the gym earlier.

Oh. Guess who got hold of the TV remote control after that.

Heh.

- Voxeros

Cookies Of Death

I was in Kuala Lumpur last week on a buying trip and we covered as many as 13 supermarkets in just 2 days.

Crown Prince was with me this trip and we conversed mainly in his native tongue of Ta1wanese Hokkien.
 
One of the stops was AEON Big (formerly known as Carrefour) when I spotted this product.

I grabbed the product and ran over to him excitedly....


Me: Eh. Jeet eh jiak liao eh si lang eh!
(Translate: 哟! 这个吃了会死人的!; Translate: Eh. This one eat already will die people one!)

CP: Simi?
(Translate: 什么?; Translate: What?)

Me: Nair...... SILANG butter cookies lor!

CP: -________________-"

Me: Hiak! Hiak! Hiak! Hiak!

- Voxeros

Sian XMM Episode XXIV

• China.org.cn (03 Mar 2013) - McDonald's To Open On Zhangjiajie Mountaintop

It all started when TehC shared a news article about McDonald's opening a restaurant atop Tianmen Mountain, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, in Zhangjiajie, China at 1,518 metres above sea level.

Such a beautiful site of historical significance only to be desecrated by over commercialisation.

Sigh. *shakes head in disbelief*

So anyway, I shared this bit of news with Energizer Bunny (real name withheld, of course) and her response caught me totally off guard.

Aiyoh! This xmm also very cute lor!

Rachelteo has a rival liao!

Read on and enjoy.

p.s. Click here to read the rest of the Sian XMM Episodes.

Image Credit: http://static.stomp.com.sg/

- Voxeros

Rice Cooker Big Mac

It all started when I stumbled onto this youtube recipe (at the bottom of this entry).

Big Mac is one thing. Rice cooker is another.

But Big Mac and rice cooker together? And with fries, nuggets and diet coke??

WUD??

I took the bait, line and sinker of curiosity as I set out yesterday to McDonald's (they don't deliver to my place coz too far. Dammit!)

So here are my observations as I go through the process.

1. Rice - 1 cup i.e. this is a meal for 2 persons with a little bit extra. If you are going to cook for more people, you will need to do this twice coz most home rice cookers are not big enough to fit more than 1 Big Mac and nuggets.

As for the water level, it will have to be less as you will be topping it up with diet coke later on.


2. French Fries - After washing the rice and leaving the required water as mentioned earlier, it's time to add in the fries. The fries will also act as a buffer to prevent the bottom bun of the Big Mac from soaking up too much water and become too soggy.


3. Big Mac & McNuggets - Add in the burger and the nuggets. You may wanna add the nugget sauce, Sweet-n-Sour/Barbeque/Curry to add a little more taste to your soon-to-be very very confused palate.


4. Diet Coke - Important to note. It has to be diet coke as the sugar in regular coke will caramelise under the intense cooker heat. Don't worry about the rice ending up too sweet coz it won't. Aspartame, the artificial sweetener, breaks down under high heat which is why you don't see them in zero-sugar confectionery (for diabetics).

Do not dunk the entire cup of diet coke into the cooker. Add just enough to cook the rice to your desired firmness. A little bit of trial and error is required here.

Drink the rest of the diet coke. It's refreshing. No?

The picture above is the end result when the rice cooker is done cooking.

As you can see the cheese, together will all the yummy juices has seeped and flowed into the rice.

With the spatula, mashed up the rice, breaking up the buns and the nuggets for a more even spread.

An interesting thing is that the battered skin of the nuggets falls off as soon as the spatula disturbs it. What's underneath isn't the "pink slime" that has been the talk of the internet lately. It is just a white piece of meat like as if it is a fillet of chicken breast. (See below for a close up).

The rice is mildly sweet with the remnants of the aspartme from the diet coke and a slight hint of the sweet and sour sauce.

The rice requires you to slowly chew as the flavours do take awhile to coax it out.

Verdict? Surprisingly not too bad and it was a joy to see the conservative, unadventurous AND boring folks cringe and turn up their noses.

Meh.

 p.s. Oh and you will have to flip a coin to decide who gets the pickle slice.

Here's the video clip mentioned earlier.

- Voxeros

Happy 127th ACS Founder's Day

On this 1st day of March 1886, Anglo-Chinese School, my alma mata, was founded by Bishop William Fitzjames Oldham.

So here we are, 127 years later as we grew from strength to strength.

During my years in ACS, there was this prose that ends with our school motto and it has etched itself into my heart since.

Live not in the glory of the days gone by,

Nor over your failures droop and die.

The past is dead. In the years ahead,

The Best Is Yet To Be.

• JayWalk Online (10 May 2007) - The True Meaning Of An ACS Boy

If you recall my old entry (above) where I joked about what ACS meant.

A - ang moh buay pai
C - chinese buay sai
S - sian charbor sibeh lihai (厉害)

Then someone asked me how to say "The Best Is Yet To Be" in Chinese. Admittedly, I was stumped for all my life, it never occurred to me to translate that to Chinese.

Well, an ACS boy is not one to back down from a challenge and so I put on my thinking cap.

Et voila!

不往当年勇，
不愁当年落。
过已去。 来日年，
至胜在握中。 

 Now who say ACS boy Chinese buay sai? LOL!


Happy 127th, ACS!! 祝英华127周年校庆!!


- Voxeros