Alma Temple @ Bukit Tinggi, Pahang

The public may not know the presence of this temple at Bukit Tinggi where it houses the famous Colmar Tropicale (aka French Village) and the Japanese Village. For exact location, it can be reached by looking to the signboard when you already at the hill. It is located in the middle between the Bukit Tinggi Golf & Country Resort and the Colmar Tropicale. Before I proceed, you may need to recall your Form 5 History subject where you and I was taught on Vedas, Sanskrits, Ramayana, Mahrabhrata and etc.

The above is the God of Brahma aka the God of Creation. God Brahma is one of the Trimurti beside Vishnu (the preserver) and Siva (the destroyer). One can easily recognises God of Brahma as He appeared with four heads, four faces and four arms. With each head, He continually recites one of the four Vedas.

One of the distinct feature of God of Brahma is He holds no weapons unlike other Hindu Gods. On the four hands, He:

1. holds a scepter in the form of a spoon which is associated with the pouring of holy ghee or oil onto a sacrificial pyre signifying Brahma as the lord of sacrifices. 
2. holds a 'kamandalu'- a jar made of metal or even coconut shell containing water. The water in this jar signifies the initial, all-encompassing ether in which the first element of creation evolved.
3. holds a string of prayer beads called the 'akshamala' which He uses to keep track of the Universe's time. 
4. holds the Vedas and sometimes a lotus flower.   

The symbols encompassed by God of Brahma.

'Me getting the blessing of God of Brahma'

It is also important to note that you are required to take 4 joss sticks only and start praying to the God of Brahma by going clockwise starting from your 6 o'clock direction. (Requirements for joss sticks may differ from temple to temple).You must of course pray to all 4 headed God of Brahma. This temple is kept clean by His devotees. Offering in terms of money is optional but encourageable for maintenance of the temple. 

On the fine day of 2nd day of CNY, I got to opportunity to witness a team of lion dance from KL getting the blessings from the God of Brahma.Let's have a look to my recorded video below.

From this video, I got to know that every lion dance team will seek for blessings from the God before performing to the public. This lion dance team was to perform at the Bukit Tinggi Golf & Country Resort. I had learnt a lot from this temple visit. It is also my first time to step into a Hindu temple apart from the one located at Batu Caves.

This is the main and the only entrance of the temple. Overall, this temple looks simple, clean and well maintained. So, to all readers, if you happen to spend a vacation at Bukit Tinggi, do drop by and get the blessings from the God of Brahma.  

Lastly,

Poitu Vaarein!! (Don't understand? Ask your Indian friends, WE are 1 Malaysia!)

*The pictures and the video was taken upon permission from the temple's care taker. All information sources are from Wikipedia. Thanks Raj aka Crabs for some of the information above.

My Favourite Surfing Spot - my room @ Cheras

If you ask me this question, definitely no other places than my own ROOM. Next question probably which house? Answer will be at Cheras Condo. 

Those days, I always think and experience faster connection and more stable line at Setapak house rather than Cheras. Those my friends should know that my connection at Cheras sucks terribly. There is something wrong with my wireless modem till my usual best connection at 18.0 Mps, usual connection at 11.0 Mps and late night connection at 2.0 Mps. OMG! How to survive with such connection? 

With 11.0 Mps, I have to open one site by one site. If I open them in one shot, the connection will turn to ‘hang’ mode and then the connection suddenly turned off. Blogging becomes difficult as when I upload large number of photos, connection will be terminated half way. The blog post at the editor may not be saved . I have to wait a long time for the connection to re-establish and then check again whether the post is saved or not. If yes, thanks God, I can carry on with uploading and making the post, whereas if not, SH#T, I need to re-do again! Sometimes, when I make a blog post, I may experience ‘n’ times connection problem making me feel very frustrated and end up complete the blog post at Setapak.

On one fine day, thank God for making the modem to be on error. I can’t connect the whole day. I contacted the Streamyx hotline at the middle of night and GOSH!! , the operator gave me wrong information on my connection problem. Hence, I was unable to connect my Internet till I called them again the next day and got assisted by a better operator who diagnosed correctly my connection problem.

Why I was so happy with that event? This was because it induced me to get another new modem from my future brother-in-law. It was a free modem from TMNET when he applied for his streamyx. When I tested at home, it seem ok for the first few days and turn bad the following day. Nonetheless, I had replaced the Cheras modem with this one. And the result was TERRIBLY GOOD!!! Initially, I have to resort to buy a new antenna for the old modem to see any improvements with the line. Yea.. the line definitely better than previously but then the connection still flip-flop (suka-suka on, suka-suka off-quoted by Wee Ling). Since the outcome of this modem was superb, it served as our saver in the house.

With the new but a bit lousy modem, the best connection is 56.0 Mps. The usual connection is 36.0 Mbps and the usual low connection at 11.0 Mbps. OMG! Can you see the difference? I can now upload VIDEO to YouTube without failure which is impossibly done with previous modem! I can now open multiple blog sites for my daily blog visiting with facing any problems. When I go back Setapak to blog, I realized the connection there is poorer due to the fact of different plan. Cheras one is RM 88 while Setapak one is RM 66 plan. That’s the reason I love to come back condo to blog now onwards. 

*This is one of the blog post under the Project Alpha Season 2 which is presented by Adidas Action 3 and supported by P1 and MAS.

So, have you cut yours? ‘Sudah potong ke??’

My fourth Nuffnang cheque

Hey peeps! Welcome again to my blog! Finally, I had received my fourth Nuffnang cheque. Initially, I plan to receive this cheque during the CNY week. However, due to wrong calculation and my forgetfulness, I was one day late to cash out my payment causing the late reception of the cheque. 

The above earning was generated from 1  October to 31 December 2009. As usual, thousand thanks to all my readers who visited my blog frequently. Some even commented regularly and make a daily visit to my blog.

I will try my best to update my blog frequently despite the hectic schedule I am enduring now. There are seriously many posts related to my life, foods, travels and many more that I would like to share with my readers. I really hope I will able to do so.

Last but not least, thanks Nuffnang for being a wonderful advertising company. Not only they provide us the earning opportunity, there are many FOC events, movie tickets, contests and etc.

Thanks for the support! (To view my previous earning, click here)

  (Image source: Google)

Hutan Lipur Lentang @ Pahang

Hutan Lipur Lentang aka Lentang Recreational Forest is accessible through the Karak Highway. It is about 5-10 minutes distance from Kampung Bukit Tinggi. At the exit to Lentang of Karak Highway, there is actually a small tunnel connecting from the left side of road to the right side where the forest is located. In case you miss this turning, don't worry. Head on the road few more km until you reach the toll. There is a small space for U-turn at the Smart Tag lane. If you miss this turning as well, no worry. Pay for the toll and right after you pass the toll, there is very big signboard for U-turn at your left side. If you still miss this turning, I think you will go to Kuantan instead. Haha.  

This is the top view of the place from where our car was parked at the side of the road. Perhaps, due to the holiday seasons, this designated parking bays at the main entrance was 'full house'.

Let's have a peep on what the public do here. As seen in this picture, we can spot people playing at the river stream and camping.

Increased zoom of the camera spotted a family was having a picnic with a tent built nearby. We can also see how they were shaded by tall trees from the sunny sun. 

So, our mission now is to explore this Lentang Recreational Forest. This was my first time visit to here. After you pass the main entrance, you can spot many member of the public were having picnic along the river and the children mainly were having a good time playing at the river, Then, you will reach to the above bridge.  

When you are crossing the bridge, you can see the kids swimming and bathing  in the river. This place is perfectly nice for a family members outing especially if there are many kids in the family.  

So, while crossing the bridge, I took these pictures. On the left were two kids shaping something on the sand using their hands while on the right was a kid who knew my presence and my camera and obediently pose while I was capturing him. Good boy!

And now, we had reached to the camping site. There were many camps built scattered all over the place. Oh yea.. there is a public toilet at there too. Always remember to keep the public places clean after you had utilise them.

I got a chance to take a picture at one of the camp built. In fact, I invaded their territory. Haha. Don't worry. I am not stealing any of your belongings which were dumped everywhere.

Hey, check out the guy on the left? What was he doing? Peeping something?

A kid with his undies was spotted.

One can also do jungle trekking here.

Taking a picture while holding the short tree trunk. WHY?

Because I can't lift up the big tree trunk. Haha. There is a small plaque written the name of the tree as well. As above, the tree is called 'Jelawal Jaha'. Its botanical name is Terminalia subspathulata King.

I didn't go further deep into the jungle. If you had explored this place, do let me know what is interesting there.

As mentioned earlier, you can drive your car pass the main entrance but it will be fully packed especially during holiday seasons. So, park your car at outside to aovid being struck in the jam inside with limited space.

Now I know the name of the river -->Sungai Benus

Hutan Lipur Lentang is a favourite place among those Pahangians as well as KL citizens due to its short distance from the Karak Highway. The journey from Karak Highway to this place can be as fast as 30 minutes time. If you were planning to have a picnic here, bring your own mat along. There are some food stalls at the main entrance. There are also a public toilet facilities. No parking fees or any other fees imposed here.

Enjoy your weekend!

I Just Love Good Smelling People

Bad odour or simply ‘smelly’ is more common to the guys than the girls. This is because the fact that men have more hair than female due to the testosterone hormone. There are two type of hair in our bodies namely:

1. Coarse, usually pigmented terminal hair eg head hair, pubic hair, facial & chest hair (male)
2. Finer, less visible vellus hair

The hair growth and size is modulated by hormones particularly testosterone especially during the puberty. Since men have more testosterone level, they have more terminal hair and larger size of hair follicles at their faces during puberty.

Some claimed that the more hair a man possess, the more the girls are attracted to. Is it true, dear ladies? Some girls like their couple to have hairy chest or hairy beard or mustache. That's only when you are not beside them when they are sweating. Haha. 

When there are high numbers of hairs in our bodies, we tend to sweat more especially in our hot, not so humid weather. This causes the bad smell to arise. The best way to eliminate the smell is by bathing frequently during the day time. If we do not have the time for bathing such as when we are working, the next possible way is to use a deodorant.

PLEASE DO NOT USE PERFUME. IF YOU WERE TO USE IT, PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU USE A LIGHT PERFUME AND STAY AWAY FROM ME. 

For many, they will use perfume as solution. However, I am strongly against it. The smell arises from our sweating body plus the perfume will make the SMELL even UNBEARABLE. For me, I personally cannot tolerate well with perfume. It seems to be a hypersensitivity reaction. Whenever somebody with a heavy perfume pass by me, I will cough non stop as my nasal mucosal get irritated. This is even worse if the public uses a CHEAP brand or super heavy concentrated PERFUME. STAY AWAY FROM ME!

Hence, the possible solution is to use a deodorant. There are varieties of deodorant in the market such as Adidas, Gatsby, Nivea etc. For me, I do sweat a lot. I usually will make sure I have enough baths especially after a sweating session. However, if it can’t be do so, I will choose to use a deodorant. I prefer those with quick dry action as those liquids which wet longer will stain on our clothes. How about deodorant spray? It is found to have hypersensitivity reaction with my nasal mucosa too. Another approach which women prefer more is to use the deodorant crystal. This is used during the bath where one actually brushes their brushy bodies’ hair to eliminate the odour.

On top of everything, the only reason we take care of our personal hygiene is to stay fresh and active at all time. Personally, I do think this matter does not usually happen in girls. In my personal experience, I always felt the girls are like flowers. Whenever I in contact with them, I can smell the fragrant body smell which happens to attract me. I am not going to mention my friends name but they are some friends who leave a significant smell on me. HAHA. I always wonder how come I use the same bath soap but they can be fragrant while I remain smelly?

People with good smell will lure his/ her friends to them. Your conversation will become more lively and coupled with your opposite sex physical appearance, it seems to be a heavenly talk. Have you experience so? I have quite many of such sessions.  

Last but not least, I do like good smelling people. If you are one, perhaps we can meet up more.


Project Alpha Season 2 is presented by Adidas Action 3 and supported by P1 and MAS
*All picture sources: Google Image

Vegetable farm @ Kampung Bukit Tinggi, Pahang

Hey peeps!Today, I want to bring you guys venture into my kampung or hometown located at Kampung Bukit Tinggi.Yea.. you got it right! It is the village located nearest to the Genting Highlands as well as the famous Colmar Tropicale (aka French Village) and Japanese Village situated at Bukit Tinggi. You guys know who is Dato Seri Liong Tiong Lai, the Minister of Health? He is the MP from Bentong at which Bukit Tinggi is located within.

By the way, this post is about real vegetable farm and not the Farm  Ville in the FB! As I always tell my sis, do something realistic rather than planting fake vegetables daily. =P

 

Abandoned logs at the entrance.

  

The typical setting of a vegetable farm.

 

My auntie supplied these green vegetables to the market at Bentong town as well as those food restaurants at Gohtong Jaya.

Now let's learn about Chinese vegetables.

 

Any idea what this vegetables is called? Argg Chinese vegetables are hard to be identified.

  

Green onions

  

Yu choy or yau choy : green leaf with small yellow flowers.

Name please.. It is best eaten as sugar preserved prickles or blended into juices.

Chili plant

Name please.

Name please

Wonder why these vegetables got holes?

  

Tadaa.. the culprit! One of the major problem in the crops is the attack of the insects. Being attacked is normal, is it the matter of how much pesticide one should put to balance out the benefit over risk. If you see any vegetables completely perfect, that may indicate high level of pesticide used. However, too much attacks by pests will destroy the crops.

Me @ the vegetable farm and under the hot sun.

  

Papaya tree along the river side.Behind these papaya trees is a stream of river.

  

The trees are so high.. how to reach them?

 

Answer is find a shorter one. Haha. And start plucking!

  

After years of visiting, this is my first time taking pictures here. Bloggers crazy behaviours?

  

Crazy? :Lets see what I did under the super hot sun! Get scolded by my sis from doing this.

The plucked vegetables which then undergone cleaning, weighing and wrapping before they are sent to the respective destinations on the same day it is plucked to preserve the freshness of the vegetables.

Me and my cousin

That's all for now. Car got heavier due to these plucked items.

Intense Debate comment system removed!

Dear all readers, I’m sure you should have noticed that I had installed a new commenting system called Intense Debate about 2 weeks ago. After some research, I finally decided to give a try to Intense Debate as this will give a more interactive way of communicating with my readers.

Lets see what are the features offered by Intense Debate.

1. Improved commenting system. One of the features that attracted me was the threading where one can reply directly to a specific comment with nested replies. Blogmaster will receive alerts for replies and new comments. Another distinctive feature is the blogmaster can reply or moderate the comments via email (I didn’t try that). Users can also put smiley emoticons and check their spelling before posting.
   
   
2. Improved administration tools and powers. The blogmaster can choose the Auto-filter comments by keyword, email and IP addresses. At the same time, the blogmaster can do blacklisting by Auto-delete comments by keyword, email and IP addresses or ban users from posting. Akismet system will help prevent spamming. These tools is important as the blogmaster can easy identify the IP of the spammer and blacklist them.
   
   
3. Improved social commenting. Intense Debate allows users to post comments using services like Facebook, Twitter and OpenID. They can also sign up for an IntenseDebate profile or simply comment as a Guest.
   
   
4. Improved sharing tools. With the sharing buttons, one can share the post to Facebook, Delicious, Yahoo Buzz, Myspace, Windows Live Favourite, Twitter, Digg, Google bookmarks, Reddit, Stumbleupon and Bebo.
   
   
5. Improved visiting system to readers’ own blog. This is very helpful to me who will visit the blog of those who leave comments in my blog. With Intense Debate, one can just click to their name and it will go directly to the readers’ homepage. However, with the blogspot commenting system, those blogspot users will usually log into their Google profile before commenting. This make re-visiting difficult as when the links of the readers are clicked, it will redirect to their blogger profile before one can see the listing of their blog. Most of the time, blogspot owner do not hide their inactive blog making difficulty in choosing the correct active blog of the readers to be visited.
   

Great and attractive features right? I installed the Intense Debate but was facing difficulty with it. Initially, I can’t find the comment link on the front page. Through Google search, it directed me to sort of forum but the solutions were unclear. Through the main homepage of Intense Debate, it seem that the Q & A column was not comprehensive and detail enough to provide such solutions. All they ask to do is to uninstall and reinstall which I had tried many times but unsuccessful.

Apparently, this Intense Debate works better with Wordpress blog. The blogmaster can import all the Wordpress comments to Intense Debate but it can’t be the same with the Blogspot comments.

Besides that, the Intense Debate will hide the existing comments when I choose the option ‘display comments in posts without comments’ of which the comment links do not appear on front page. If I choose ‘display comments in all posts’, the new comment system will hide all the previous comments making all the previous post with zero comments. If I choose ‘display comments in closed comments’, the correct usual system will appear without masking the previous comments system. However, it took me a great time to discover that as there isn’t any answer in the Q & A column. The changes in the settings may not be immediate effect but will take another great length of time before the new changes take into effects. That delay really make me frustrated!

Apart from that, the Intense Debate comment system loads too slow in my blog. There are some problems with IE users as they cannot view this comment system unless they enable their Javascript which is usually off in the default settings. Even with Firefox, the loading time may be differ from time to time which will discourage commenting by readers. This is the major drawback that I felt that I shall revert back to the previous Blogspot comment system.

The major blow which I only managed to see these few days was my number of posts in my front page which is set at 6 has been reduced to 3. I am not sure whether there is any relationship with the Intense Debate system but surely it happens after I installed it. When I clicked previous entries, the number of posts shown was 6 but the new entries with this Intense Debate comment shows only 3. WHY? There might be probable that I had used too many bandwidth that Blogspot reduces the number of posts but the possibility is very low as my blog is not a famous blog with few loyal readers.

With all these major drawbacks and limitations of Intense Debate comment system, I will revert back to the original Blogspot comment system. I am now backing up the previous comments for the new posts with Intense Debate comments. So, for those out there, I am not sure whether you face similar problem. My advices are:

1. If your blog already loads very slow, do not try this system.
2. If you are emphasizes on SEO, Intense Debate is using Javascript system which will be of disadvantages in term of SEO.
3. Perhaps, best with Wordpress.com
   

That’s all for now~

Best Bits of Project Alpha Season 1

Do you guys know what is Project Alpha? Project Alpha is the first of its kind that brings you a closer view of the life of Malaysia's top bloggers and how they are able to be among the top based on their distinction. It is Malaysia’s first TV show about real-life bloggers.

In the previous season 1, the 7 featured bloggers are sixthseal.com, beautifulnara.com, nicolekiss.blogspot.com, budiey.com, redmummy.com, fourfeetnine.com and kennysia.com.

Among those video clips, I think the best was the one by Huai Bin breathing fire. Apart from him, Jojo Struys who was with him made me LMAO when she was attempting to do the same act. And of course, her attempt wasn't successful like Huai Bin did. Check it out at the below video:

If you ask me the best bits of Project Alpha Season 1, it will definitely not among the top 7 bloggers. Why? This is because the best bits is ME who had won RM 1100 worth of prizes from the Project Alpha Blogging Contest. I was placed third in the 3rd week. Don't believe me? Have a look of below photo or simply click my winning entry or my prizes entry.


Please don't get jealous. And of course, I share these prizes with my best friends. =P

In this brand new season 2, there will be another 7 featured bloggers comprises:

1. Niki Cheong
2. Klubbkidd
3. Ninie Ahmad
4. Azwan Ali
5. KYspeaks
6. Shaolintiger
7. Cheeserland

Want to know more about Project alpha Season 2? Check it out here at their official website. Project Alpha Season 2 is presented by Adidas Action 3 and supported by P1 and MAS