I have always believed that no matter how many pills and supplements that promises fast weight loss you take in, doesn’t grantee that you are in fact losing your fats the healthy way. There is no such thing as slimming down in such drastic period of time and maintaining the weight for months. And just because you did lose your weight after taking in those fat burners doesn’t mean the fatty acids that is clogging your arteries and mass fat surrounding your organs are gone.

In fact, I have seen for myself the result of a friend of mine taking in slimming pills went wrong. Instead of targeting the fatty areas she had wanted to lose, the pills had targeted her breast and bottom. There goes her perfect cup size and derriere. She had wanted to lose the fats on her tummy, thighs and arms but got something else instead.

It also has brought my attention that more kids are taking in dietary pills. These pills are only meant for adults my dear, not kids, not teens. Kids are still young and the only way and the best way to lose those extra kilos and cellulite is to exercise.

Exercising is not difficult. Even walking to school or your destination (if your destination is around 2km) is the easiest way to lose them. Plus it doesn’t cost you a cent. Eating right is also part and parcel of the whole losing weight program.

Lessen your intake of junk food, fatty food and consume more food that has high in fibre and munch on those greens. I have to emphasise how important to have your greens. The vegetables are your friend and it’s these vegetables and fruits that you get your vitamins from.

If you really need to slim down and really need to take in those pills, consult your doctor. You may never know if you have an allergy towards any of those pills that you will consume.

I was so happy when the government had announced that the language they would be using in Science and Maths is English. I told to my self that finally the Malaysians would not be left out in the changes of the world. But when I heard the bad news yesterday, ALAMAK!

Come on, English is now the universal language and everyone in the world uses them. In the working world, almost everything is in English. When a customer calls up for enquiry most of my customers converse in English. Don’t need to look that far. The scientific chemical names are in English and it would be extremely hard to understand anything should the Malaysian Science students try to implement their current Bahasa Melayu chemical terms into English.

One of the reasoning the government gave about the new change is that the ministry found a small percentage teachers fully using English to teach the two subjects. If it was me, I’d send the teachers, everyone of the Maths and Science teachers to rigorous re-training in English. They are supposed to be teachers, not students and if they can’t make an effort to use the correct form of English while teaching, than I say the teacher is not fit to teach.

Why in the first place didn’t the government send their teachers back for through re-training to brush up on their teaching etiquette and their command of English before they even implement the policy of changing the subjects into English language?

I myself have taken a look at the Form 1 English textbooks and I was shock at the simplicity and low level standard. The English textbooks are as good as my Primary 2 English textbooks!

What I think the government should do if they really are so inclined to help their students out in their plight to better master the English language is to revise and re-study their English standards for all levels every 5 years or so. Primary school English are suppose to teach basic English as in Grammar, Vocabulary, Sentence Structure etc.

Form 1 and above are to polish the language they had studied and their mastery of English, not stick to basic use of English. I was brought up in Singapore school and I say their English teachings in Secondary school was great. Although there wasn’t grammar solving problems wasn’t easy but they had used English in Secondary school as a mean to ready their students when they step out into the working world.

I shudder and pity the current students which are taking Science and Maths. Understanding the subjects in English and then reverting everything in BM is not an easy task for the kids. I myself have trouble understanding the Malay form for Maths and to think I scored an A2 for my Malay language in O’ Levels.

Even though the Malaysian government try to add more hours in the English curriculum, I think it will not help anything at all. Until the ministry send their English teachers, scratch that, ALL of their teachers for re-training (YEARLY) and revise their English Module system, I’d say the future for our students understanding and speaking in English is looking very bleak.

OOh… If only I was 10 years old again I would love to have this in my backyard. Well even though I have no backyard and instead have a large front lawn, I don’t mind having one of these built. My nieces and nephews would surely love this new addition whenever they come over for a sleepover.

Or perhaps this one. This one looks much better with lots of slides and places to climb and have fun with.  I’m actually looking at a website for kids and it so happens that they sell swing sets. I can almost imagine all the great stunts I can do on the playground. Oooh….

Though I’m an adult, every time I have a chance to get myself on a swing at the beach, I’m more of a child than an adult. Hehehe.. Well as the old saying goes, there is a child in everyone of us.

Ingredients:-

• 1 whole chicken
• 3 large red onions
• 1 stick of lemon grass
• 3 tbs of sugar
• 2 tsp of salt
• 1 tbsp of Kurma powder / Rempah Sop
• 3 tbs of Chili Boh/ Chili paste
• 4 large pieces of pandan leaves
• 1 medium size tumeric leaf

Cut your chicken as how you would wish. I’d advice on 8 equal parts.

Blend your red onions and lemon grass. Do not use all of the lemon grass, only use the first two inches of the lemon grass from the root. That is where the flavour and smell is greatly concentrated.

Mix everything except the leaves with the chicken. Once that is done, line the base of your baking tray with pandan leaves and then arrange all your marinated chicken with all the paste onto the tray. Slicing the turmeric leaves into small pieces, garnish it onto the chicken.

Once that is done, pop the chicken into your oven at a temperature of 250 degrees Celsius for an hour or so. Don’t panic if there is a reservoir of oil in the tray. The oil is from the chicken’s fat, thus making it good for your health.

Once it is cook, take it out from the tray, throw away the oil and serve. You can also reheat the leftovers for 30mins at the same temperature and the flavour of the spices will be much more flavoured when you bite the chicken.

The GST Offset Package was paid on the 30th June 2009, one day earlier and I can hear the joyful laughters of Singaporeans. Too bad for me I had to spend it all on my payment of my overdued bills. Surprisingly not many Singaporeans know the date and amount they will receive their free money. How could anyone overlook such an important event left me clueless.

I would be in Singapore for the weekend and would not be back until Sunday evening. In fact I’m going to use this opportunity to head out to Sim Lim  Tower and go electronic components shopping! I need to stock up all of my switches, my heat shrink, cable lugs and other things. Good thing I’ve managed to repair my car air con else I don’t think I’d be able to head out to Singapore.

I will update about my car repair experience once I’ve returned from Singapore. In the mean time, I want to hog onto my relative’s 22 inch LCD HDTV. A huge TV and PS3 would be a nice way to destress myself from my 2 weeks car repair experience. Of course with a large cup of ice chilled cola..

I do agree on his opinion is adding videos to certain blog posts to make the post more interesting and getting about to learning how the traffic of a website works is a must if the blogger is heading into a full time blogging profession.

However the article has forgotten to input certain aspects like having the basic knowledge of picture editing and basic website designing. Picture editing is very important for all website owners since the pictures they post could be taken by other users and repost it under their name instead of the original graphic designer. Thus, adding in a watermark on all your pictures is a must to stop the pictures being recirculated for others usage. Adobe Photoshop is one of my favourite software to edit and create new designs.

Basic knowledge in website designing and programming is a must for bloggers. Ask any bloggers or website owners about debugging errors and they will sure to inform you that almost every month, there is bound to have some errors popping in on their website. I’ve had my fair share of my website creating errors especially every time my Wordpress platform upgraded itself. Editing the errors can be a chore and a lot of hassle so it is advisable for all website owners and blogs to learn a thing or two about HTML and PHP codes.

To make website programming editing easy, I have used a free software called Notepad ++. Sure you can always use the normal Notepad software found in your Accessories but Notepad ++ shows the line numbers, coding colors to make your debugging life more easier. You can easily get the free software from CNET.

However the circuit for my air-con is still under construction. I had all the wires and circuit up but unfortunately I couldn’t find the wires to the air-con blower fan. The wires were impossible to trace as I couldn’t get my hands reach into the main terminal. But I’m not going to give up. After a day or two of relaxation, I will find the error.

Anyway Arul returned from his camp after his 2 weeks stay in Tekong. He brought home lots of humorous stories of his bunk mates and officers. He had lost weight, 4kg in fact and I think he became a little bit quieter after his initial 2 weeks stay. He has to report back to his camp by 6pm today, so that will be 2weeks down and 5  and 2weeks more to go.

Furthermore I saw his insurance cover and was flabbergasted. $150,000 minimum! He’s worth at least $150,000 the moment he signed in as a National Service Men. I’m only covered at Rm10,000.. drat it!

Oh yeah, if anyone is ever interested in getting a good Rochester personal injury lawyer like Haziq & Co in Malaysia, don’t hesitate in visiting the site I’ve added. I heard they are really good at getting every penny out to support your case

Ayu trying to cook

It’s Sunday and this means I’m a chemist in my kitchen! This time I made Wanton chicken, fresh from my own kitchen and not from the frozen packs that you can easily get from the supermarkets.

I don’t use pork since I’m a Muslim and instead I used chicken. You can get frozen minced chicken meat from the supermarket. I had used quite a few brands of chicken meat found in Malaysia and I prefer Farmbest Brand anytime. It’s cheap and very nice.

Furthermore I’d advice for Wanton Lovers to always keep frozen minced chicken in their fridge as a spare. The recipe is so simple and easy. You can also just whip it up in minutes.

I also uses crab meat sticks as a replacement for shrimps. It’s cheaper…

Ingredients:-

• 300gm minced chicken meat
• 3 sticks of crab meat, cut into small pieces
• 4 sticks of Chinese Parsley (daun sop), chopped
• 1 stick of Spring Onion, chopped
• 1 tsp pepper
• 1tsp black pepper
• 1tsp Sesame seed oil
• 3tsp soy sauce
• 1 pack of wanton skins

1) To make the filling of the wanton, mix everything in a bowl and leave it to marinate for an hour.

2) Take a slice of the wanton skin, taking half a teaspoon of the filling and place it at the center of the skin. Taking an edge of the skin, fold the skin into half and clamp the edges tightly with your fingers. You can also use a normal batter of flour and water to make it as a glue to hold the edges together.

Keep repeating the process untill all of your fillings have been used up. Once you are done with it, you can either fry your wanton or cook it with chicken soup.

I put my wanton in my Tom Yam soup.. yummy!!

I had followed and marked all the wires to their connection but when I inserted the the new wires to their original connection, the cooling fan and air con fan turned on without the car being keyed to “ON”. In this case I knew that I had bypassed the relay.

No matter how I tried the fans insist on being on. Now I have to recheck the relay and the trace the whole circuit in case I accidentally put the relay on NC (normally close) circuit. I hate it.. So hate it.

Anyway I have to head back to the car now. In the meantime, those who wishes to get an insurance home and do not know where to get the best home insurance quote, please drop by at the link before mentioned. Insuring your home is a must since you may never know when a disaster may hit your house and fire accidents are nasty.

Gravatar is a shorter name to its orignal, Globally Recognized Avatars. It conjures up an avatar/ icon/ picture of the user whenever the user has left a comment in a blog, website or community forums. It creates a more closer community to see an avatar of the user instead of just plain words. In fact, it distinguishes the user from others, making each user unique.

How to know if Gravatar is present in website I’m in?

It’s simple. Click on the comment link to leave a comment in the post/website. Just fill up the form you see there and leave your comments. Once your comment is approved by the admin, you can see the avatar/icon placed in the comment you had left. See below for sample.

If there are comments left by previous visitors, you can easily detect the Gravatar plug-in by looking at the icons given randomly on each comment user. If the user has an account with Gravatar, his own unique avatar/icon will pop up instead of the normal random icon. You can view it below.

How to get my Own Unique Gravatar?

Just visit www.gravatar.com and register yourself in. It only takes less than 5 minutes to register and upload your picture in. Simple!