VCR Cafe at KL

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Whenever we visit KL, we always have not enough time to visit café. So this time we are quite determined to try out a café. We were quite eager to find a good place for our Sunday Brunch. So here we are at VCR Café, which is probably the nearest café from Berjaya Time Square approx. 10 minutes walk. It is located at the corner of a row of old houses, not very prominent unless there is a crowd outside the shop. (if you cab there, beware of drivers go round and round to cheat your $$)

Entrance of VCR Cafe

Time to explore the VCR! The moment I enter, I could already smell the fragrance of coffee and my eyes couldn’t stop peeping at what the rest of the customers had on their tables. I was eyeing at every single dish, from cookies to cakes, pastries and breakfast meal. Taking a look at the menu, I couldn’t make up my mind. In the end, we ordered whatever that was recommended by the staff.

The menu was also very classic – name and description of the dish.

The Cafe Menu #ASKTHECHEF

What did we Order?

• Black Velvet Cake – RM 13.00

Black Velvet Cake

Besides being colored in classic black, there was only a slight different in taste from the usual Red Velvet Cake that was more commonly sold. I was a little disappointed at the moisture and texture of the cocoa portion of the cake. It was a little flaky and broke into smaller pieces while we eat it. The cream cheese filling helps to enhance the sweetness of the cake. Thus, I felt that this may not the best choice of cake to try.

Taste: 3/5

• Soft Shell Crab Burger – RM26.00

Best Food – Soft Shell Crab Burger!!

This was my favorite dish among everything else! The burger was soft and went very well with their homemade tartar sauce! It was like a Japanese burger- deep fried soft shell crab served with egg, sesame, seaweed, pickle, onion jam and tartar sauce. I love the deep fried soft shell crab which came in one full piece, it was crispy, sweet, juicy and savory! This is definitely a must try!

Taste: 5/5

• Potato Waffle – RM 25.00

POTATOOO WAFFLE

Unique Waffle made from potato and flour, topped with a generous portion of mushroom, herb salad, 63 degree egg and tomato fondue, something to try even though I felt that the waffle was average, I would prefer it to be crispier on the outer layer. But I am impressed by the combination of potato waffle with poached egg! It’s always good to try something new!

Taste: 4/5

• Turkish Style Egg – RM 25.00

This is so different from what we expect haha we had no idea what this was and why we ordered it. It was recommended by the staff at the counter. So apparently it was Pomodoro Sauce with Chickpea, 63 degree eggs, chipolata, greek yogurt, pistachio and sourdough toast. Yes a long list of ingredients. There is a lot of chickpea so i wont recommend if you are not very fond of chickpea.

Taste: 3.5/5

• French Toast – RM19

 

So this is French Toast? Yeeeaaa

This was entirely different from what we expected when we ordered French Toast. So it’s basically French toast with Espresso Ice-cream, Raspberry dressing, Crumbles and Mocha Sauce! It totally not the usual French toast but it was beautiful and yummy! The crumbles were good and the whole combination makes it a perfect dessert!

Taste: 4/5

All in all, great ambience, quality food, friendly staff, great café to visit! The soft shell crab burger was my no. 1 choice if I were to try again! The potato waffle is good for sharing if you have 2 or more people! It really within walking distance from Berjaya time square so fill your stomach before heading to Bukit Bintang for great shopping and entertainment!

 

VCR
2 Jalan Galloway
50150 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
+60 3-2110 2330

Opening Hours: Daily 08:00 – 23:00

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AMPED Trampoline Park Singapore

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FIGHT WITH GRAVITY

YES THAT’S US JUMPING! JUMP.BOUNCE. JUMP.BOUNCE

Are you looking for some crazy, fun things to do in Singapore? There is now something for you to try! The Amped Trampoline Park is Singapore’s first indoor trampoline park – the place to go for you to bounce, jump and sweat it out! Basically it is a huge area (5000 square feet) full of interconnected Trampolines with various activity zones including the dodge ball court, slam dunk lanes, a foam pit, airbag and main trampoline jumping area.

At the foam pit, you can test out your balancing skill by walking on the colored flat rope! And if you fall you will lane in the foam so just fall lah!

It’s hard to take a shoot with everyone in the AIR!

YOU NEVER KNOW HOW FUN IT CAN BE UNTIL YOU TRY! It forces you to jump and you are actually having a great workout while having fun! This is also a place for you if you ever wanted to perform acrobatic stunts!

For first time jumpers, you have to purchase the grip socks(3SGD/pair) and watch a 3 minutes safety video. For subsequent visits, the socks can be washed and worn again. Jumping is fun! We also played dodge ball and tried all the activities in the amped park!

This is a perfect place for anyone and everyone! Furthermore, it is suitable for all ages (children aged three and below require a parent to physically accompany them onto the trampolines while those aged between 4 and 11 need a parent to be on the premise, i.e. parents can remain in the seating area.) which mean you can go with your family and friends, everyone can participate and have endless bouncing fun together!

When you are ready to head down for the indoor trampoline park, do take note that it is recommended to book in advance as there’s limited jump slot for you safety! You won’t want to crash into people everywhere you jump! We went to the River Valley one and it is not very crowded on a weekday night!

Address:

46 Kim Yam Road,  The Herencia, Singapore 239351 (Unit #02-11)

Tel: 8228.5961

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Singapore Homerun baseball

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I believe some of you have already heard of this place or seen it on blogs before, that’s how I got to know about this place as well. The name baseball sounds like it is physically intensive, you are wrong, no running is involved! All you have to do is batting and pitching, sounds easy right but maybe not. It might not be easy to start. At the same time, this may not apply to you because I have no talent/ skills in baseball HAHA! Basically with no idea how to bat, I miss most of the balls HEHE But, it gets better as you try more.

Baseball Model

The lighted number will off when shoot

The place is smaller than what I expected. There are 4 different batting lanes (1 softball and 3 baseball) with different speed ranging from 80km to 110km catered to different skill level. Besides the batting lane there is 1 pitching lane where by the machine will automatically shoot out the 12 ball per token. All you have to do is CATCH, AIM, and THROW. Best thing here is that everything is automated, it resembles like an arcade whereby you purchase token at the counter and get to play them by placing the token into the machine, and you don’t have to pick up the baseball at all! So basically you don’t have to be I sports attire as long as you are comfortable.

We went on a weekday night so it wasn’t really crowded which was a real advantage! You do not have to queue and can choose which lanes you prefer. And also for people like me, it is less stressful and embarrassed even if you hit (miss) the balls shot from the automatic pitcher.

For those that say Singapore is boring, there is nothing to do in Singapore or if you are thinking of what to do or where to go, why not try this? It is really a good activity to try for everyone!

Homerun Baseball
200 Pandan Gardens
#01-01/02/03/04
Singapore 609336

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Philips Avance XL Airfryer

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Finally after much consideration and temptation, we finally purchased one! YAY! What is it? It is simply a low fat fryer using Rapid Air technology. Are you sure that machine can fry food? Will it be worth my money? You may say you don’t usually eat fried food and already have an oven, so why bother? That was exactly what took us so long to have the air fryer. But now having an air fryer, it can make nearly anything! You can bake, grill, roast and fry but sadly you can’t steam. Up to now, I am still impressed by all the food and entered my air fryer and came out amazing delicious.

Tadaa!!! See that PAID sticker? It is officially coming home with me! Air Fryer in Box!

      
Free Cook Book by Courts!! They also gave us a free scissors and a knife!   Philip Air fryer cook book included in the packaging!
Here it is placed in my kitchen! No assembling is required, just open and this is what you see!
It comes in 2 colour black or marble white! We laid aluminium foil under the net to ease the washing! You can do that too!

First time using air fryer! Fried Chicken without Oil!
Di di di Time’s Up !

Here you can see the oil that drip down !! We didn’t put any oil! 

What to try next? Of course Fries!! It is the first thing many people will try when they get the air fryer!

The key thing here is soaking the fries in water first, drying them and cooking at low temperature until cooked and increasing the temperature to brown and crisp them! The fries aren’t exactly what i ate from Mac Donald , don’t expect to have McDonald fries. But… the fries with air fryer has a healthy stamp! They were pretty crispy in the outside and soft inside.

Instructions : Soak the fries in water for 30 mins, dry it thoroughly with paper towel. Preheat the airfryer 165degree for 3 mins and you can start cooking the fries at 160degree at 6 mins and then 190 degree for 10 mins. The air fryer heats up quickly and come back this is what you will see! First time and i am satisfied with the taste! Time to enjoy the fries !
So can the airfryer bake? Yes it can! Here is the first time i bake using airfryer!

Oh yeah! So far it look like it is a pretty handy machine! The food taste pretty delicious retaining its original taste! The Air Fryer provides numerous benefits and really makes a different to my family. It is becoming one of the most used appliances ! The key point is its speed and you can get delicious healthy food almost effortlessly! It sets itself aside from the normal oven, the crisp and sweetness of the food. The Air fryer really do impressive stuff and it works on almost any food. We tried making fries fish, chicken, fries, and even prawn cracker. And yes, it works!

Another reason that we purchased it after observing it for a long time was the price. Since we have an oven at home we felt that the purpose of air fryer is the same and there was no need for it. But after trying it out, I can now say that yes there is a different especially the crisp in the food and the different food it can cook ! We brought the Philips Avance XL Airfryer at $399 with FREE $100 SHOPPING VOUCHER (Usual price: $539) from Courts! The original price offered was $439 but we discovered that Courts have lowest price guaranteed promise (another point to take note!) where they match the price of competitor. Thus, as promised, Courts match the price with Harvey Norman and offered us $399 which was the same as selling price as the 0.8 kg capacity Air Fryer! What an attractive deal with an additional of $100 shopping voucher from Philip Showroom (ToaPayoh Lorong 1). The promotion is only from 25 May to 2 August 2015. This was how we got attracted and purchased the air fryer!

  

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23jumpin @ taiseng

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Hello everyone, last week i have just discovered a interesting place with a number of cafes! It is at Arvin Place 1, a little but ulu most people will not head towards that direction unless you have an idea where you are going! But don’t worry it’s not going to be a ulu long journey to good food! It is around. 5 to 10 minutes walk from Taiseng mrt! Walk to Arvin road and you will see a side street, Arvin place follow the signs and you will find it! It’s a row of cafe!!However the glass door are made of dark dull glass which makes it looks like it it not open, do take a peep to see if it’s open! They look newly opened! So we decided to try out 23jumpin!

Here is the menu!

Our Menu : Pizza Waffle
Since the pizza waffle is the new dish , so we decided to try it !There is two flavour for it : Mushroom cheese and Hawaii . There is also a special option for those that have difficulty in making choices which is “combination of hawaii and mushroom cheese” So why not? One product multiple taste!

Rate: 4/5
It really satisfy my craving for waffle and pizza. The waffle was still crispy despite adding savoury ingredients on the waffle. The waffle was filled which ingredients on the entire pizza which i really love it !
I would perfer the mushroom cheese flavour !

Duck Confit

Rate: 3.5/5
For the Duck Confit, i still perfer the one at Savuer in terms of taste and texture!

Jumpin’s Original Cotta

Looks really like something when we eat  HAHA

Eat only if you are sharing:)
It’s nicer because you eat together!

It is easily accessible from TaiSeng Mrt! So do try out the food there!:)
Probably will be back to try out other dishes! HAPPY CAFE HUNTING!

23 Jumpin
Address: #01-25, The Commerze@irving, 1 Irving Place
Mon: 11:00 – 14:00
Tue – Sun: 11:00 – 21:00

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How I spend my last day of 2014

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Hello everyone!
2014 has come to an end. Even though it feels just like any other days in my life, but i shall end it happily!
And nothing makes me happier than FOOD!!
So where did i go for GOOD FOOD?
Join me for my Johor Bahru Food Trail!

First place we went for dinner was a Chinese seafood restaurant(zichar)!!

Yi Jia Seafood Restaurant – 億家海鲜

We ordered the last coconut drink !

The first dish was served! Look at the beautiful soft juicy flesh! It was so juicy and delicious especially with the sauce bringing out the best taste! I felt so excited and all ready to eat!

This is another of my favorite dish! Salted egg sotong! Basically, i love salted egg! Salted egg prawn, salted egg sotong, salted egg chicken… anything with salted egg i would want to order! The sotong was really nice, it was cooked to the right level just nice – not too hard or too soft. But i prefer to have more salted egg maybe cause i like to eat the salted egg!

We also ordered  Yi Jia Crispy chicken which was one of the signature dishes!  It was really special the skin was crispy but the flesh was tender! It tasted like peking duck but now it’s a chicken!

And !!!  GOLDEN SAND SALTED EGG CRAB 
The most awesome dish that we are waiting for!!This is our crab!!! The reason we are here !
Woohoo! You can actually pick your own crab and ask them to cook it in the way you want! The sauce was creamy and tasty! I can’t stop taking spoonful of the sauce! But, the mantou was small!! The crab was big , filled with fresh juicy crab meat! It’s worth getting your hands dirty!

So this is our dinner! There were actually more food but you know when it comes to food it’s hard to capture them! Fastest hand wins so most of the dishes were attacked before i could capture them!

Next Stop!
Dessert 2 U
We are going to have more food !! We came prepared with our stomach ready!
The cafe was quite new, basically it looks simple yet presentable! Decided to give it a try. The boss was very friendly as well and gave recommendation on what dessert to order!
 

People behind this trip!! My mother(sleeper), Godmother(Driver’s Assistant), Godfather (Driver) , my sister and my future “handsome” brother in law(videographer/my sis happy pill) ! Haha! My mum was only awake when there’s food and camera haha!

So we tried the Durian snowice, black glutinous rice kueh, herbal jelly, tofu beancurd, and steamed egg pudding!

“But first… Let me take a selfie!”
HAHAHA the selfie turn out to be an accident! Ohmy! The sauce of the black glutinous rice kueh flow out!

And here is my Godmother and Godfather! They were the VIP- very important people of today! Thanks for driving us, making the last moment of 2014 well-spent !

Beside Dessert 2 U, there is another dessert cafe, dessert library. It looks interesting but i’m not a fan of book, i only love food!

After dessert what else? Standard must do thing in Malaysia !
Massage! Massage in Malaysia is so cheap!
So just relax and pamper ourselves!

That’s not the end!!

Third round of food!! And i definitely grow fat today from the 3 foodstop!

One 2 Eat Café!
The cafe was really crowded,  filled with young people, families and adult!
Wonderful  atmosphere! Nice food, beer with live band! They sing really well and you can send in songs that that you would like them to sing!

Taddaaa!! The clock hit 12! Had a fabulous day eating of my 2014!

Have a fantastic start to the new year!Happy 2015! Hope to bring more happiness to everyone!

Thank you for reading! Hope you had a great year ahead!

Here’s the address of the places i went today!

Yi Jia Seafood Restaurant – 億家海鲜
Address: No. 17, 19, 21 & 23, Jalan Setia 9/17, Taman Setia Indah, Johor, 81100 Johor Bahru, Malaysia

Austin Heights Desserts 2U 糖水阁
Address: No 45, Jln Austin Heights 8/8, Taman Mount Austin, 81100 JB

One 2 Eat Café
Address: Jalan Austin Height 3, Taman Mount Austin Johor Bahru

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TCP World Ready Camp 14 to 16 November 2014

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Hi everyone!

I’m going to share my experience of Ngee Ann Poly Ready For The World camp under The Christieara Programme (TCP). TCP is a programme enables students to discover and challenge themselves to achieve excellence in personal, social and leadership skills. The camp was runned by Rohei corporation, a learning and development consultancy that champions the equipping of core skills for adult learners. This is the camp for students by Rohei!

This camp is so so so different from any other camps that i have attended . It is really one of a kind, one of the camp that impacted my life. It has value added my life and made me a better thinker and learner in many aspect. It gave me the chance to experience new things and brings me to a whole new perspective of world. During the camp, it really made me think about every single problem ,even the most insignificant things and people around me.

It’s going to be mentally draining if you decides to read through!

Day 1

CAMP START!!
The theme of camp is READY FOR THE WORLD!!
Registration starts at 830am at NPYA, we registered with our respective camp mentors. We were grouped according to different countries and i was from the country of China, ShangHai. I had no idea how we were sorted out probably randomly! We were given our camp booklets and lanyards. I really like how they designed the camp booklet with the theme for the camp. The camp booklet were “passports” and we had our individual boarding pass which helps to identify us .

ARE YOU READY FOR THE WORLD?

The hospitality team did a great job!! We had refreshments for all 3 days of the camp!!
Can even drink Milo even though i’m not at home! No fear of hunger as well!! 🙂

So here’s the starts the journey that will make your emotion go spinning!

So just take a look of the photos below…. Think about What comes to your mind?

Are those what you play in the past?Do they remind you of your childhood? Do you feel familiar with those toys you use to play? We were brought back to childhood, where we were still young and carefree. We saw the toys we used to play in the past, hear the sound of children laughing , chatting, playing, and got to taste childhood snacks to remind us about our childhood.
So what is all this about? We realize that memories has become part of our thoughts, memories comes in different way, what we hear, see, taste, feel and smell. Memories triggers our emotions,influence our decisions and reaction. How to react in certain situations ,how we deal with our problems. Part and parcel of them are because of our memories. We may not be aware how we behave in situation and why are we doing certain things, or even how you feel and why you feel this way. It all lies with our subconscious memories that trigger out actions. Think about the moment someone made you angry, was it because our past experiences that affected emotions? We need to be aware of our thought and emotions and don’t let them control you.

So how do we manage our emotions?  It doesn’t takes a day to change how we think but we can develop and learn over time. We need to recognize and understand emotions in ourselves and others, and use our ability of self awareness to manage our behavior and relationships.   The biggest obstacles to increasing self-awareness is to avoid feelings of discomfort and stop us from learning from our own experience. Without self awareness we will feel lost.

So here’s the next activity : Albatross

Some pictures to bring you through. In this activities we were brought through tribes that represent traditional welcome ceremony. The place was filled with some of the tribes decorations such as flowers. They communicated with such using their local language which was a clicking sound and brought us to the front. In this ceremony, the ladies were then brought to sit on the floor while men had chairs to sit on. Some of the assumption that people had was why the guys had the privilege to sit on chair which is considered to be of more luxury than sitting on the ground. The camp mentor then clarify by explaining that in their tribes, the guys are traditionally hunters, they take lives and are to be separated from the ground. Thus males sit on the chair. While on the other hand, female are considered more important and are to be closer to the ground as they give live.

“We don’t see the world as it is, we see the world as we are.”

Many of us form conclusion based on what we know, how we think. We can even lead to jumping into the wrong conclusion. There are many things that we do not observe. These things can actually cause friction and conflict due to the lack of awareness and understanding. 

The idea of the Albatross activity was to pick up the skill of social awareness and relationship management. It allow us to understand that culture are different in the world, people are different,and we shouldn’t assume people are same as us. We all have different belief system and values that we relates to our daily life, it not only people in different tribes just even our friends, we should respect individuals as who they are. Connecting with individual is not an easy task, we should learn to be open to share and understand each other. It take humility to adapt to people different from us.

Social awareness is the ability to pick up emotions in other people and understand what they are going through. We should learn to stay focused on perspectives of others instead of being caught up in our own emotion. Sometimes, we can even get caught in between our own emotions as well as others. It hard to learn to manage them but we need to learn.

Next, we had extraordinary and amazing speakers, Rachel Ong and Joel Mok to bring us through servant leadership. After hearing their stories, i feel so inspired by her story .She shared with us her personal life journey and the difficulties she overcame. She was an humble lady but her accomplishment was incredible. She also shared with us the characteristics of servant leadership , her words really impacted me. Not because of her qualifications, but her kind heart to serve and help people is impressive! She shared with us about humility, which was very useful life skill. Humility is not thinking any less of ourselves, but thinking about ourselves less. If a person is humble, he/she does not need people to know what they have done. The leader will quietly make things happen. We do not need others to praise or approve our actions. These are what servant leaders does, and people follow them because of who they are.

Click HERE to know more about Rachel Ong!

Music Session by Joe and Sherman

Coming to the end of Day 1!!
Here’s where are are going to sleep!!
First overnight camp! Introducing THE LOFT!!

THE LOFT

This is probably one of the most comfortable camp, with beds and aircon!

It is also one of the most enriching camps !
So first day , what did i learn? I learn about myself, developing every single part of myself ,i discovered so much things about myself that i didn’t know in the past. Even though i still don’t have a clear purpose of my life, specific skills that i’m good in, aspiration of the future…. TO BE DISCOVERED 🙂

END OF DAY ONE! HOPE YOU ENJOYED READING! 🙂

To keep up with all my adventures and escapades, do follow me @notchbad on FB and IG or visit my new website at www.notchbad.com! 🤗

Hello Kitty Fun Run 2014

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Hello Kitty Fun Run is now in Singapore!!

We were excited to take part in the first-ever Hello Kitty 5km Fun Run in Singapore, to celebrate Hello Kitty’s 40^th birthday! So here, I’m going share my personal experience of being a participants!
It started with a pre-registration online! My sis and I decide to take part as soon as we saw the preregistration. We preregistered to get a cheaper rate! The preregistered rate is $65, normal rate $70 and for later registration, price increases to $75.

So after registration, the next event will be the race pack collection! Really look forward to the race pack, especially the plush toy and event tee! The Race Pack Collection is located at Suntec City Mall on 24-26 Oct 2014, from 11am to 7pm.  My sis help me to collect the race pack on a Friday evening at around 630pm. Since many participants went after working hours as well, there was a massive crowd, the queue was more than 500m outside the Suntec City mall. Everyone was queuing orderly and form a long line even though there’s no barricades outside the Suntec City mall.  Furthermore the collection ends at 7pm. The security stop the queue at 7pm which caused unhappiness among participants. It was quite unreasonable as they queued for so long and at 7pm they were told that the collection is closed.
Click HERE to see the situation.

>>>>Fast forward to 1 Nov  >>
We reach Vivo City at around 730am. Wore the hello kitty shirt and ready to go!

It’s filled with hello kitty runners, all wearing the same red and white Hello Kitty Tee!! The queue was rather scary, from Vivo City to the starting point. It feels like a riot in Singapore where thousands of people are gather together like the Hong Kong Protest.

  

We were stuck in this long queue, wonder if it could be the longest queue in Singapore. Since we had nothing to do while queuing, so here’s some retarded photos of the two of us. Morning Face  So let’s take a look how many people were behind us

And how many people were in front of us…I’m not kidding..

There is no wave timing as such all 17,000 participants were stuck at this point. We queued and finally made our way to cross the first point, but this is not the starting point yet. The first point is block by barricades to dispatch participants batch by batch so that we can go in waves. Yay to crossing the first barrier thinking that it is the start of the race…But no it isn’t
hahaha

It was a bit more spacious, as they controlled the number of participants crossing. 

We manage to move forward bit by bit, and finally arriving at the starting point. However, by than Hello Kitty left. We didn’t manage to see hello kitty at the starting point…So this is exactly how many people there is in 1 wave.

The sky started turning dark. 😦 Everyone was hoping for the cloud to move away..

Here we are, closer to the starting point!

Opportunities for Photos!!

Our attempt to take photo with the monorail
It’s reaching our turn to cross the starting point!!

And HELLO KITTY RUN starts now!!!
Yet, just before we started running it started to drizzle. There were still lots of people behind us!

It started raining heavily. Many runners were lost, not knowing what to do. Many people started running, seeking for the next nearest shelter. Some families with children quickly take something(umbrella, towel, clothings etc) to cover their kids. Participants started asking the crew for the nearest shelter, yet they only to hear: “there’s no shelter, you only can continue running!” Apparently, there is no wet weather plan, especially for this event with so many kids and even parents with prams. They could have provided an alternatives route to the ending point or to the nearest shelter for participants travelling with young kids or those who require assistance.

For me and my sis, we tried looking for shelter and gave up after a while since we are already drenched. So let’s continue enjoying the rain!

There were some markers which indications of how far we ran!

Here’s the checkpoint of love which marks 800m into the race and there’s no shelter through out..

We continued walking through the rain together with other participants. It can still be fun despite the rain!!
Sad to say, the rain did not stop..Some people stop under the shelter but the covered area was quite small.

It was a pretty heavy rain, but Heavy rain does not spoil the fun!

Hello Kitty Runners are happy runners!!

Along the way, we spotted some hello kitty balloon!! We were so happy to see Hello Kitty even though it is just some balloon. This is how photo turn out on a rainy day! Opps!! Water droplet on lens

The balloons was definitely a plus point to the event! It made us feel a little better to run in the rain !Next check point!
Checkpoint of friendship-2.4km! My sister is my best friend! She makes me laugh a little louder, smile a little brighter and make my day a little better! My FIRST and EVER Friend! 🙂

Hello Kitty endured the rain together with us!! Still standing strong!
Here’s how we look after running through the rain!
So this picture was taken, not to show my sister’s sexy body hahaha it was basically to show how Singaporean kids are spoilt in this day. The photo shows two adults covering the rain for the kid. Just a quick thought …She indeed feels like a princess in the care of her parents. What happen to a world in which kids get muddy, get dirty, get messy and just have fun? It such a rare opportunity to play in the rain. They are lucky to have parents to care and protect them . But could over protection cause them to become spoilt and pampered?

After some time, we finally saw the end point!! FINISH!!
But… here’s another jam again. Everyone were stuck at the Sapphire pavilion where the collection of snack and medal were. The emcee announce through the PA system that there will be another medal collection on another day who those who don’t wish to queue. We continued queuing since we completed the race. We really hope to receive our medal for completing the run! There are no barricades as to where to form the queue. Everyone just queued aimlessly without any proper queue. It was just one whole bunch of people. The PA system constantly instruct participants to keep moving forward and leave the pavilion after collecting their medal, but it is so packed that we can hardly move !!

The organizers, pink apple explain “it was due to unpredictable weather circumstances, this caused a sudden influx of participants at the pavilion.”
The crew started shouting around rudely. I felt that participants were rather patient and waited as instructed. Yet all we receive were yells and screams from event crews. We understand that they are trying hard to control the situation but we are also stuck and unsure of what to do.

Some people started saying that they ran out of medals. How can this happen?
So it was due to some participants that completed the race early took advantage of the chaotic situation to queue and re-queue for more medal. This clearly shows the lack of control at the collection point. Here is a photo to show that participants collected more than 1 medal 😦

After a long wait, they stop distributing and announce to change the venue of the medal collection to the Beach area. We were so tired and confused by the chaotic situation.  Only then, we decided to stop and exit the race since we do not know if we can ever receive our medal. Really disappointed to walk off the race without collecting the finisher medal. So that’s the end of the Hello Kitty Run, overall we enjoyed ourselves! Dashed through the rain and finished the race. But… we went home empty without the finisher medal. We felt that it was not only due to the bad weather condition but run was poorly organized especially at the starting and ending point. There were way too many participants jam at the starting and ending point. Do they not understand how much 17,000 participants is? Are they ready for such event?

We hope that the organizers could take review on the HelloKitty race, put themselves into the shoes of participants, and do a better job in future.

To keep up with all my adventures and escapades, do follow me @notchbad on FB and IG or visit my new website at www.notchbad.com! 🤗

Day 5 : Jiufen (九份) , Pingxi (平溪) , Shifen (十分)

To keep up with all my adventures and escapades, do follow me @notchbad on FB and IG or visit my new website at www.notchbad.com! 🤗

Today , we will be visiting Jiufen (九份) , Pingxi (平溪) ,  Shifen (十分)! Both Pingxi (平溪) and Shifen (十分) are towns rich in culture and history and provide a nice glimpse at Taiwan’s beautiful natural scenery.  We book a MinSu at JiuFen for 1 night so that we can explore the places around PingXi Line. In order to reach JiuFen, we have to take Highspeed Rail(HSR) to TaiPei Main Station and then transfer to RuiFang Station. Since we were carrying all our luggage, we decided to take a cab from FengJia Inn to TaiChung Railway Station (台中車站). The directions and timetable is indicated clearly so it is rather easy to purchase the tickets and proceed to the platform. The Timetable will indicate the train number,departure time and the destination.
All ready to board the HSR  (高鐵)!!

There is 2 types of train, the express train goes direct to TaiPei Main Station without stopping at all the stations which is much faster compared to the one the stop at all station. We took the express train and there’s actually seats allocated. I found it really amazing that they are able to allocate seats as most trains just allow the passenger to roam around and look for their own seats , furthermore, passenger board and alight at different station! So this is how the Train look like!

We have reach TaiPei Main Station but that is not our destination! From TaiPei Station , we purchase train tickets to RuiFang Station which is 49NT per person.

Here’s the map of the train station(火車)! it about 45 mins from TaiPei Station to RuiFang!

Finally , a lot of travelling ,changing from speed rail to trains ! We reach RuiFang!!

Welcome to RuiFang!!!

Since RuiFang is along the route towards the formerly profitable coal and goal mining towns nearby, Houtong (猴硐) , so it’s not surprising to see coal mining track and transportation !!

Here we are!

After exiting the train station, there are signs to direct you to the bus stop towards Jiufen (九份), Jinguashi (金瓜石).
Some photos i took along the way to JiuFen!! JiuFen is quite a nice and relax town to stay in! 2 years ago , i came here during a school trip and the guide explain that long time ago there were only nine families in Jiufen. Since transportation were not readily available and JiuFen is inconvenient, so everything they will buy 9 serving of item for the 9 families. Hence, it is called JiuFen.

We hardly get to see houses built on a mountain, over here, houses are built on the different level of the mountain!! Take a look at the photo and you will understand what i’m saying!!

So here is our accommodation! JiuFen Hui Ming Home stay.
We read many JiuFen home stay review and were really afraid to book as many reviews indicate that you have to climb a long flight of stairs before reaching the home stay! So after many research, we decided to book HuiMing Home stay. We were quite happy and satisfied as it just a few minutes walk around from the bus stop! No stairs yay! Just a slope up to reach the entrance! HuiMing homestay is slightly above Rita’s house!!  We deposited our luggage and immediately move on to explore other places , making full use of our time!!

Next stop: PingXi

Generally, the transportation here are quite easy to understand and navigate around. However, the timings are fixed and the train frequency is quite low, so it’s good to take a photo of the timetable to not waste time on waiting for the trains. PingXi is the a simple town known for releasing sky lantern.

Ping Xi Railway Track! Since it is our first tour around attraction. We were excited to take photos on the track!

Basically, the main attraction here is ping xi old street.  It is a narrow street with shops with either food or just mini stores selling souvenirs . We decided to buy some food as we were hungry by now. So we tried the famous Dachang Bao Xiaochang (大腸包小腸 ) which means Small Sausage in Big Sausage.  We saw it in FengJia many times and the queue is also very long, and our stomach was always filled with all the other street snack, hence we have to give it a miss! But over here , they sell as well ! So we decided to give it a try! When we see people queuing for it, we couldn’t understand what’s so special about it , it is simply Taiwanese sausage sandwiched in sticky rice. Surprisingly, it tasted delicious!! The combination of the sausage and rice just blends well !

As mentioned, apart from food, they sells some local souvenirs, the main product here is sky lantern key chain and cards!
Since, we planned to visit Shifen, we decided to release the sky lantern at ShiFen!! So let’s move on to ShiFen Station!

ShiFen is probably the main highlight of the day! Looking forward to release our own Sky Lantern on the railway track!! But before that, let’s take a look at ShiFen!
Photo with the trains that brings me here!!

Some sightseeing at ShiFen!
There were a lot of tourist taking photographs along the track! So we walk all the way to the end where there are lesser people!

It’s really nice to be there…

Here are some sky lanterns along the way!

Now it’s finally our turn!! Releasing the sky lantern is a must-do in Taiwan!!The sky lanterns are huge and they comes in different colour representing different meanings! Red for health, yellow for wealth and prosperity, blue for work and the list carry on! The single colour sky lanter is 150NT(apprx $7) You can choose the colour which you wish to fulfil! They even have rainbow sky lantern with a combination of 4 colours which cost 200NT (aprrx $9). We wanted the best so we choose one of the rainbow sky lantern(red+yellow+blue+orange) which represents 万事如意.

Our SKY LANTERN!! 4 sides of the lantern!

Now we are READY!!
Ready! Set! Go!!

Time to go back before we miss our train!
Time for food again!! Tried the bubble tea and felt th Ruifang Food Street 瑞芳美食街! It is just around 3 minutes from Ruifang Train Station, and it is indoor! It’s filled with many different varieties of food that it took us some time before deciding what to buy! We tried the mianxian geng with cuttlefish, and glutinous oil rice and guotie!

So, here we are again back to JiuFen ! Before returning to our home stay, we went to the tea house street! JiuFen old street is close at around 6pm ,but the teahouses here open until around 9pm. The street is filled with unique teahouses, Traditional Red Chinese lanterns  and stepssss!!! The tea houses are along way up so be prepared to climb the stairs!!

Simple yet fulfilling day at Jiufen, Shifen and PingXi!! Many beautiful scenery and it’s a nice place for short getaway!

To keep up with all my adventures and escapades, do follow me @notchbad on FB and IG or visit my new website at www.notchbad.com! 🤗

Day 4 : Lai Lai Soybean Milk 來來豆漿, Zi Nan Temple紫南宮, Jiji Township, Nantou (集集), Jiji Military History Park 集集軍史公園, Jiji Railway Station集集火车站, Wuchang Temple 武昌宮, Jiji Military History Park 集集軍史公園, Checheng Wood Museum 木業展示館

To keep up with all my adventures and escapades, do follow me @notchbad on FB and IG or visit my new website at www.notchbad.com! 🤗

Hello everyone! After a busy free and easy day yesterday, today we’re back to Lee Da Jie bringing us around! Today’s itinerary is planned by Lee Da Jie which means we don’t have to plan where to go! Will be introducing some places that we visited! Hope it will be useful to you and you can add the places into your to-go list!

First location: Lai Lai Soybean Milk 來來豆漿

Having a great breakfast is the best way to start your day right! Lee da Jie drove us to Lai Lai Soybean Milk Shop known as lai lai dou jiang (來來豆漿), it is a local eatery with good soya milk, shaoping (chives in crispy pancake), deep fried carrot cake and many many different kinds of local local delight, it is a very famous breakfast restaurant among the locals. They serve savoury(salted) and sweet soy milk in a bowl.

We tried both sweet and salty soy bean with youtiao. The savoury soybean is slightly more special as it is something new which we do not have it in Singapore !

Some photo we took during breakfast!

After breakfast, we went to a local plantation to harvest Guava fruits. They harvest different fruit during different season of the year. However, we didn’t have the chance to pick the fruits as they sprayed pesticides on the crops. So since we were there , we took some photos in the plantation. Most of the plantation here are family-owned and operated by them.

2nd Stop : Zi Nan Temple 紫南宮

Next, we will be going to Zi Nan temple, famous national purple palace. It is located in Nantou, famous for seeking fortune. It is the only temple that you can borrow a fortune for better financial luck. Many people have successfully achieve their wish through borrowing the fortune and good luck. However, it is important that you return back the luck and fortune that you borrowed! There are some local shops outside the temple. Unlike the commercialize city’s retail shop , they sell more fruits from plantation.  

This is the Chi Nan temple! For Chinese, it is believe that if you roll the Golden ingot (yuanbao), prosperity, money ,wealth, gold will flow in from all direction. So why not let’s take a picture with it, maybe it will help us grow richer !

Sorry.. I write wrongly in this photo should be 紫南宮

Another interesting item in the Zhi Nan Temple will be the rooster in the photo below! You are suppose to touch the rooster according to the your needs. Different parts of the rooster represents different meaning which includes health, love, family, wealth, work etc…

Just beside the temple, there’s an beautiful looking structure! Can you guess can is it?
It is the TOILET! This entire construction cost $38,800,000 NT.  If you’re wondering where’s the toilet , or why didn’t i take photo of the toilet ,it means that the it is too nice to be a toilet. The fountain is the exactly where the washroom is!

This is the toilet!

As i mentioned previously, many people come to this temple to borrow money as a form of seeking Gold. We decided to try it out as well, since there are so many successful stories we heard and we are already there. We borrowed and return on the spot since we do not know when is the next visit that we will return to ZhiNan Temple .Hopefully, prosperity will flow to us!!

Just some photos as we walk back to the car!
Next Stop : Jiji Township,  Nantou (集集)
The next few places that we will be visting will be aroung Jiji!
So here we stop by the track to take some photos of army machinery and the railway track.

We’re so lucky to be able to see the speed rail train as the time interval is around 1 per train! It’s so fast!!

Wuchang Temple 武昌宮- 921 Jiji Earthquake Memorial

Well.. I have to say , I’m really impressed by the WuChang Temple.
Look at this crumpled temple! It is the effect from the power of the Jiji earthquake in 1999. How amazing that they are able to preserve this meaning crumpled temple for 15 years! It is really a significant historical building there! So they build another temple in front in memorial of the 921 Earthquake.  

The temple sunk in to the ground. Yet, they are still able to keep it standing!

Here’s our lunch! It is a famous beef stall here! We tried different parts of beef here, the juicy tender here is damn good!

Jiji Military History Park 集集軍史公園
It is a very mini historical park that display some military forces such as fighter jet, airplane, battle tank, rocket launcher, amphibious tank etc.. Just one look you can finish looking at the park.There’s no one at all,no visitors nor anyone to take care of the place. I guess not many tourist is aware of this place. It is only worth a visit if you have free time and pass by this area!

Jiji Railway Station集集火车站

Since Jiji township is one of the smallest township in TaiWan, it is not a very populated township.It was built during Japanese Colonial Era, there’s not alot of public transport here. After having Jiji train station, more people are able to visit Jiji. You can travel on bicycle around the same town.

You can take a railway train to Jiji Railway Station and rent a bicycle from there. There is a row of bicycle rental shop directly opposite the Railway Station! The train goes to Sun Moon Lake as well!

Checheng Wood Museum 木業展示館
Over here you will be able to see some woodcraft around the Museum . There’s also some souvenir shop that sells some interesting items which includes handmade woodart and postcards etc..

The wood museum also has a railway track and some trains! In the past, Checheng is an essential timber processing industry, it is for timber shipping purpose. However now, it is a local attraction and landmark. So you can take photo without worrying that the train is coming! It’s really a nice place to take photos, just look at the mountain scenery at the back !!

What a wonderful place to visit and relax!
Lee Xiao Jie brought for us red bean pancake! Even though i am not very fond of red bean but it smells really good! It is stuffed with a lot a lot red bean inside! She told us that it is cheaper over here and they give more red bean as compared to city’s stall!

Red Bean Pancake

So we were drove back to FengJia Night Market for more shopping and food! We tried this fried dough with icecream. There’s a mini queue there but personally i think it is not very nice! Not really worth trying as Feng Jia Night market has much more better food !!

That’s the end of Day 4! Today’s attraction that we visited is really something special! Especially, the 921 memorial temple is really very different from ordinary temple! Unlike all the developed visitor’s attraction , Jiji small town is a simple and peaceful town filled with historical value for tourist to learn about the culture!

To keep up with all my adventures and escapades, do follow me @notchbad on FB and IG or visit my new website at www.notchbad.com! 🤗