Leaving Oregon - Autumn 09

I am leaving today, in the airport currently.

Good bye autumn
Good bye chilly weather
Good bye beautiful scenery
Good bye yummy Korean food
Good bye green trees
Good bye foggy morning

Note: Photos are taken by Chun at different times and spot

Painted Hill & Sheep Rock

Everywhere was reported to be cloudy, shower or wet on last Saturday. The only place that didn't rain probably is the place we went. I visited some colourful hills with a bunch of monkeys. LOL. The name of this place is Johd Day Fossil Beds National Monument.

(Note: This pic is from Bong's camera)

It is in a very outskirt area near Mitchell. There are no restaurants nearby Painted Hills, the nearest is the tiny one in Mitchell. We visited the Painted Hills which looks like watercoloured hills. The sands and soils has some kind of minerals that create yellow, red, green, goldish colours. Some parts of the hill are very fragile that walking on the ground will cause the soft surface to sink.

By the time we reached there it was in the afternoon where the sun was above our head.

There is a trail where we can walk on to get closer look at the hills.

After that we went to visit Sheep Rock which is the fossil monument. There are a few trails for people to hike and we took the shorted one which was like 1km.

There is this place called Blue Basin at the end of trail. Green or blue-ish rocks/hills. It was quite a boring place because all were hills and hills and hills, number of humans we saw didn't exceed my finger counts.

A group photo at last. We were back to Hillsboro at 11pm. Tired

Fall & Trillium Lake

I am here in Oregon during fall. All the leaves beginning to turn yellow, some to red.. and orange. It is my first time experiencing fall, to tell the truth. The scenery is beautiful. Perfect for a peaceful weekend if you want to spend it slow and comfy.


It was my second and last Sunday morning in Oregon. I wanted to go somewhere that I can take a photo with Mt Hood behind me. Lovely Aichee and hubby introduced me to this place called Trillium Lake where it supposed to have Mount Hood reflection on the water.

This is the photo I took of Aichee accidently when I was swinging my camera. Anyway, I kinda love it. Feels like the world around her moving nonstop, going back in time.

We stopped by the road side on the way up to the lake, and took some photos, which looks something like Yosemite valley.

There is supposed to be Mount Hood at the end and it's reflection in the calm water. However it was really cloudy and grey on Sunday. There isn't any hope to see the mountain at all. We hung around for like thirty minutes or plus hoping for the cloud banks to slowly shift away. But they didn't because there was like clouds everywhere. Anyway, it was nice to just be there. Twillight kind of weather..

This man had the lake all by himself. He was out there fishing with his small little puppy on the floating boat. We went for dimsum later on, not a dissapointment because the food was not bad.

My Grand Canyon trip

I squeezed a tight Grand Canyon trip on the next day I arrived in Arizona. I asked Wee Meng if he would like to go with me again to Grand Canyon because he visited the place many times before. I always see pictures of the magnificent Grand Canyon from people that travelled to The States but I haven't been there myself. Despite the short trip, to be exact 3 days, I had to Chandler, hardly I must visit the sandstone hills at least once in a lifetime. There isn't much chance to travel here again after this trip, I guess.


Early Sunday morning, we departed from my hotel. The drive took about 4.5 hours. Luckily I had Wee Meng to chauffeur me as I have not drive in any road in Arizona before.. Pity him that he has to hold the steering wheel whole day.


This is a must-take picture to prove that I have been to Grand Canyon National Park. The wind was strong that day. The weather board put 100m/h of max wind. After the stop to snap this photo, both of us decided to put our jackets on.

We were told to drive along the road which we will see the canyon from all the different points, from the map. We stopped at all the points near east entrance station, South Rim.

I can't really remember which point all these photos were taken because the views look almost the same from every point with the Colorado river flowing in different direction but the canyon stand still, layer of different brown tone. It was very windy, too strong that I can feel my body were leaning to a side and both my legs were not touching the ground whenever the wind blow. There were a few times my bag almost flew away if I didn't hold on tight to it.

This view I am not sure where it is. It can be either Grandview, Moran , Lipan or Navajo Point

There is a viewing tower to watch the dessert view

The dessert view

This was about an hour before sunset. This is the hermits rest. We came here in shuttle bus provided from the village

I have to show at least one picture of Wee Meng because he is the honorouble tour guide. He was trying to act courage by sitting at one of the cliff overseeing the canyon. Kill me if you want me to sit over there.

We watched sunset in one of the point. I am not sure. I think this is Hopi Point at ~6.10pm. It was once in a lifetime opportunity, to watch sunset and Grand Canyon, one of US's national park.

I was exhausted from this trip because continuosly I slept only 4 hours everyday until the day after I reached Oregon. Anyway, a big thank you to Wee Meng for his generous time accompanying me.

I left Arizona!!!

After the rush trip from Penang to Arizona, at last I am settling down in Oregon for a short time. This is a place where I love to be. Chilly. I like seeing trees, grass and green more to rocks, sand and brown. But this is not for long. I will be back in 2 weeks time. Anyway, things are really crazy here and I missed lunch on the first day I was in Arizona, not forgetting about how I ate the melted polystrene foam for dinner. It was pathetic except for the golden opportunity to travel and the good friends I have when I landed in the stranger's land. Basically they are the best people I met when I first landed.

Thanks for picking me up from airport, the help to solve my rental car issue, sending me to my flight at 5am in the morning, home cooked lunch, company for dinner and 3 days of feeling home when I was there.

Gonna sleep soon, lack of sleep lately.

Yee's wedding

I am still having my whole mind full of Twilight movie's scene after watching it at her hau's place yesterday. Now I put the fault on weeliem because he told me that this is a bad movie and I didn't even want to watch it. This movie is so goooooood. Edward Cullen is a super gorgeous vampire. If weeliem not coming back tomorrow morning, I will forget how he looks like already.. okay, I am joking. I am looking forward for the new Twilight movie, New Moon in the theather. I can't wait. I have to stop wiki-ing and google-ing


Enough of the teenager scream of cute Robert Pattinson, I am going back into reality. I was here over the weekend because I had a few buddies coming over. It was Yee's wedding last Sunday. I had this really bad food poisoning over the food we took on Saturday, we ate all spicy and sour food.

Three of us from her hometown, accompanied her on her wedding day. It was a sunny and bright day.



Teamed up with Yee's female coursemates, a photo taken with the pretty bride



Wedding reception.. Yee's dinner gown was super beautiful, her make up was really natural stunning.



Four of us stayed together for the past 2-3 nights. Lucky that they were here, accompanying me. We had enough liquor on every nights, thanks to aileng for the supplies :D

I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him... Ops.. my mind is still with Twilight. Bubbye..

stir-fried tau-kua with pork

In one of my previous entry, Joan was asking for tofu recipe. I didn't make any tofu today but it is "tao kua", which I guess one type of tofu too. This morning started hot and humid. Although we have this blackout curtain the heat still penetrate through, maybe because our home is facing the morning sun and is high rise up without any blockage from building or tree. Anyway, after a while it began to pour. Not too heavy but just enough to keep my mouth shut for the day.

I dragged myself into the kitchen and checked what I have in the refrigerator to cook for today. I still have the old cucumber which mom gave me 2 weeks ago but there is no pork rib! I settled with chicken for the cooling soup tonight. Everything with wolfberries went into the crockpot for dinner. Now, what for lunch? I will just go with something simple as my food storage is almost to empty. There is this "tau kua" I purchased from Sunshine last week. I need to go to market to restock.


Fun starts here..

**************************

1. Cut 2 "tau kua" into cubes before frying. Fry the "tau kua" with ample of oil until the skin is golden in colour. Scoop and keep aside.




2. Slice about 100g pork into small pieces. Mix with 1 tbsp of corn flour and 2 tbsp of soy sauce.




3. Chop 2 shallots into fine pieces
4. Heat up 3 tbsp peanut oil and saute the shallots.
5. When shallots start to become fragrant gold, throw the pork in and stir fry until the meat is cooked.
6. Add in "tau kua", enough salt for taste, 2 tbsp oyster sauce and water
7. Simmer , sprinke pepper and dish out. Serve hot with rice



Something simple for Saturday afternoon.

loh mai kai

This appeared in my mind for few days before I start hunting for the recipe. Loh mai kai is steamed glutinous rice that we can always order in dim sum restaurant. I have not have one for quite sometime since I stop going to Kg Jawa for breakfast. So this morning afer I woke up from sleep and all that cravings for loh mai kai, I hurried to the kitchen and soaked the glutionus rice and mushroom as it was already 10am. I need to at least marinate the chicken and pork for 1-2 hours or so.



Soak glutinous rice for about 2-3 hours to soften the texture. In this case, the steaming process will be shorter. Normally in Malaysia we will never get pure glutionus rice because they always mix it with the normal rice as it is cheaper. That's why you see there is two shades of white here.





Mix lean pork and chicken slices with ingredients like ginger sauce, thick soy sauce, light soy sauce, corn flour, salt, pepper, sugar, sesame oil, peanut oil and ginger juice. I got the ginger juice from grating a small piece of ginger and squeeze its' juice out of the grates. Marinate the chicken and pork for about 1-2 hours.

Soak the mushroom and cut them into slice. Slice the shallots too...

After some hard time steaming as I don't have proper wok to do the work, and the missing right size of bowl finally we start munching away at 1pm! It was a wonderful meal to start the weekend, and I absolutely will make it again.

My rice bowls are a little larger for loh mai kai as you see from the picture below, it's the taste that matter this time round. I am satisfied as much.

Ingredients
250g glutinous rice
2 cups water
100g chicken meat
50g lean pork meat
1 Chinese sausage (lap cheong), thinly sliced
10g black Chinese mushrooms, soaked and cut into thin slices
5 shallots, sliced

Seasoning (A):
1 tsp light soy sauce
1 tsp sesame oil
1 tsp oyster sauce
1 tsp ginger juice
1 tsp sugar
1/4 tsp pepper
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp Shao Hsing Hua Tiau wine
1/2 tsp dark soy sauce
1 tsp oil
1 tsp cornflour

Seasoning (B):
1 1/2 tsp light soy sauce
1 tsp pepper
1 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
2 Tbsp oil
1 tsp sesame oil
1 tsp dark soy sauce
1/2 tsp Chinese five spice powder

Method

Wash glutinous rice, then soak it for two to three hours. Steam it for 30 minutes.Cut chicken and pork meat into slices. Marinate with seasoning (A) for about one to two hours.Heat oil in a wok and saute shallots till fragrant. Add mushroom slices and stir fry quickly then dish up. Add cooked glutinous rice and seasoning (B) and water. Stir fry well for five minutes.Grease four medium-size rice bowls. Add some fried shallots and mushroom slices, a few slices of Chinese sausages and seasoned chicken and pork slices. Fill up with glutinous rice and press down with a ladle.Steam for 30-40 minutes. Turn over the rice bowl onto a plate and serve Loh Mai Kai with chilli sauce.

We ought to live better, remember this!

Life in point form

1. Weeliem and I both down sick on two different weekends. So we spent two weekends ineffectively at home recovering. It has been a terrifying experience as his mom thought he had h1n1 and I think it might be true. We had all the symptoms but recovered after a week. The fever was the most painful part in the sick process as I had to spent money to buy a digital termometer to monitor his temperature. Ended up we went to two hospitals and one clinic but none wanted to check him for the influenza h1n1 virus because he never faint, have difficulty in breathing or vomit blood. He has to have any of these to force them to check for a patient at his age for h1n1. Luckily we both are ok now and we have the immunity!

2. Someone in office passed away on Monday all of sudden. From what I heard, he had hypertension due to his heavy workload. Yes, working in Intel is a hell. I admit but I never thought it can be so serious. He is even younger than me!

3. Highlight: A few of us went over to my sister house to celebrate her daughter one year old birthday. My sister cooked a feast for us. The most impresive is the birthday chocolate mud cake. We could not eat the uber tempting cake on the night because we had to finish the pizzas, chicken wings and nuggets.. The cake and left over yam cake became our breakfast the next morning.

4. I have been busy with work and other stuff which keep me company until end of the year. I have a lot of unfinished work laying around for months already now. My life is so full of surprises... The biggest surprise was my trip to Oregon this year, which was unacceptably short 2 weeks but I find rewarding because I can snap some photos in the lavender farm. I love the colour!

5. I miss a trip like Australia. I want to have one again especially with little Cheryl. Something she said the other day keep on coming into my mind every now and then. She was so cute. She said "shhhhhh... baby oi oi" . It was the way she conveyed the message in her loud whisper with the shhhhhhhhh and her finger on her lips. I miss this little mischevious girl.

6. Our country politic is so messy that I think everything is crap

beef stew recipe

There is a request for the beef stew I made few weeks ago when I was still under home quarantine. So I am posting it here simple and easy.

Mix 200g beef cubes in salt and pepper, coating them with 2 tablespoon of flour. Brown them in a pan of hot oil, until you see the outer layer becoming brown. Don't cook the meat yet.

Place the beef with minced garlic (5-6 cloves) into slow cooker. Add in 2 tomatoes cut into small piece. I didn't deseed the tomatoes. Add in 3 sticks of carrots (not baby carrots.. they are tasteless) cut into 2.5cmx2.5cm size and 2 large onions, cut apart 4 for each. Also don't forget 4 stalks of celery cut into pieces and 2 potatoes medium size cubed. Cover up all the stuff with beef broth about 4-5 cups I guess. I am lazy, so I used 1.5 beef cube from maggi. I made a rough estimation of the broth, so I could not tell you exactly how much liquid I added. Let the stuff simmers in slow cooker at "high". Then you can change it to "high and low mix" when you see there is bubble on top. Add salt, your preference when everything is ready in like 7hours until meat is tender.

For replacement of slow cooker, you can cook on top of gas stove, but toss the vegetable in oil a little till you get them browned before you start cooking. Check the fire from time to time, so you don't overburn the base of your pot. Use low fire though, should be tender is 4 hours or so...

OK got it? easy peasy..

PHOTOLOG #28: 20090805

"another" day in the week

drunk

I have been spending in liquor lately. Not that I go to pub to drink, I stayed at home and had my sip everynight. I don't go pub or club or what soever, and I went none before. A few sips and go to sleep like a baby till the next morning. So now I had my left over Baileys, original vanilla flavour. I'd been hooked up to Baileys since I purchased one bottle at Macau. I love the feeling after having a sip. Everything outside my house window looks so beautiful. I can look at Bayan Lepas night view from my home and plane taking off and landing. Yes, I can see Penang bridge from here too. I feel grateful of what I have now and everything seems so great. I don't feel like working nowadays because I feel work had taken my time of my real life for the past and my best friend ai leng told me that she sees lines under my eyes when I laughed. That's bad. I am not even 27 yet. I don't know how long I can feel easy leaving my work undone because one day someone will complain for sure.

Everyone around me is busy getting engaged. I guess it is the age thing.I receive news about friend receiving proposal from their partner every week. Suddenly it is like engagement season.

Something to take care of recently, a lot people falling sick. I heard cough, flu and sorthroat everywhere. Everyone is like infected by someone everyday. I told my boss I don't want to go to office because there are so many people with cough and flu and he actually said YES. Anyway I am a good employee. I won't use this kind of excuse to keep myself off work. So I am still going to work tomorrow morning.

I wrote the title of this entry as "drunk" but in real life, I am not drunk. I don't even have a typo while writting the whole piece and I am as clear as the water. I have to keep my mind clear just because of one reason. I still have to analyze timing reports. What a life, I just mentioned that I don't want to be the work-addict and now I am planning to go back to work. Pathetic.

Another lowlight of my life: My friends are planning to go for vacation at the end of the year. But I can't join them. That's so sad..........

PHOTOLOG #27: 20090729

I am in Barn Buddy all the times. Planting, harvesting, stealing, weeding and debugging..

PHOTOLOG #26: 20090718

I went home and asked my mom on how to cook nasi lemak. Result: I made this today

PHOTOLOG #25: 20090709

PHOTOLOG #24: 20090708

My yummy sandwich for lunch..

Multnomah fall & Lavender farm

First of all, credits to Chun and Aichee for all the wonderful pictures taken. They are all too beautiful not to be picked to post but I still need to select only a few.

We went for a short tour along the Columbia Gorge National Scenic route.
We didn't stop at all points except for one, Cape Horn. It has a spectacular view of the Columbia river. We were at the west side which belongs to Washington state. The right side of the river is actually belongs to Oregon.

Along the way, we saw many beautiful sceneries, trees and wild flowers. Chun chose a larger chunck of wild flowers and we stopped for some photos

There are many falls along the route. This is the horsetail falls which the water resembles the tail of a horse, very obvious from it's name.

This one is Wahkeena falls which Wahkeena means "most beautiful" in Yakama Indian.

Next is the super famous legendary multnomah fall which to say is the second highest year-round waterfall in US.

According to Chun, the soil in this place is very much special due to the volcanic explosion long time ago. That's the reason it has all the wild flowers species that are not found at any other places in the world.

I forgot what place is this, but the view simply breathtaking. Check out the wall on the opposite side of the river..

Then we drove up to a higher place of the hills.. It is called Vista house which is like a observatory place and comfort station for the travellers. There is a gift shop and espresso bar in the tower.

We managed to drop by the Oregon lavender farm for a quick photo shooting. Purple. I am in love.


Before grabbing our dinner we dropped by Portland waterfront and snapped some photos...

Dinner at Saburo, super big eel sushi. Waited an hour for the food. End.