It’s instant miso soup… How wrong can I get?

We had bought some instant miso soup mix a few weeks back. So, last weekend, I thought I’d try it out. This is the result…

I have to say… It’s not bad!

From wikipedia:
Miso is a traditional Japanese seasoning produced by fermenting rice, barley and/or soybeans, with salt and the fungus kōjikin, the most typical miso being made with soy. The result is a thick paste used for sauces and spreads, pickling vegetables or meats, and mixing with dashi soup stock to serve as miso soup called Misoshiru, a Japanese culinary staple. High in protein and rich in vitamins and minerals, miso played an important nutritional role in feudal Japan. Miso is still very widely used in Japan, both in traditional and modern cooking, and has been gaining world-wide interest. Miso is typically salty, but its flavor and aroma depend on various factors in the ingredients and fermentation process. Different varieties of miso have been described as salty, sweet, earthy, fruity, and savory, and there is an extremely wide variety of miso available.

This is my neighbour’s house… I believe it has been rented out to Tesco workers. So much for Corporate Social Responsibility… Or maybe this is part of Tesco’s green effort?

One can get lost in this thick jungle

Have to admire their green concept… But if the creepers lock the door, won’t it become a fire hazard?

While I love greens, I also believe there should be some sort of ‘management’. As you can see, the greens have invaded into neighbouring gardens, including mine. I was quite upset… I tried contacting the owner. He said he would contact the tenant. I also dropped Tesco a ‘feedback’ but no reply as well. All those were done about a month back.

But today, we decided we had enough and would not let our garden be turned into a jungle… So, we did what we could and got someone to cut the grass (and clear the jungle on our side)… Ya, I know… So much for DIY…

My garden after a ‘haircut’.

It really looks nicer now… And neat! But not sure if the cat is going to continue to visit us… And I guess there’ll be less butterflies too… Still, when you look at the before and after photo below, I’m sure you know what I mean when I say it really looks much better…

Before (L) and after (R) the cut

I turned off the computer around midnight last night. The past few days have been very hectic for me and it will be so for the next few weeks. My workplace is relocating to a new office in Bangsar and there’s just so much to do…

There were some major last minute changes in the past few days and it’s turned all my planning upside down. So my mind has been very much focused on the office move.

This morning I woke up smiling… I was happy that I received the approval via email last night… Then I realised something was not right. I turned off my computer and went to sleep around midnight. When I shut down the notebook, I did not get any approvals yet. And I just woke up…

Yikes… Yes, it was all just a dream…

Anyway, the day ended with even more changes — new changes were scrapped and we’re reverting back to the original plan… So much for all the calculations we were working on the past few days.

I’m just glad Mrs Tai understands what I am going through and didn’t make me feel any more guilty than I already feel — I have not been spending much time with her lately due to the office move.

Mrs Tai showed me this photo she took this afternoon…

The curious visitor…

She said this visitor has been walking around our compound every day. Today, it wanted to try and come into the house. It did not realise Mrs Tai was inside… Until Mrs Tai took the photo. I guess that explains the BIG eyes…

And yes… That’s how bad the garden’s turned into…

Looks like its a house full of little people, huh?

Anyway, Mrs Tai will only be back tomorrow night. She’s still at her parent’s place but she will be back tomorrow for her check-up. But she instruct me to do a few things… Including cleaning the baby clothes… Yes, less than two months to go and there are still so many things we’ve not prepared yet… Yikes!

We have been to this restaurant called Great Nature Enterprise a few times already, but we would usually order a few dishes and rice.

Last week, Mrs Tai and I decided to have our lunch there. We wanted to try out their noodles and fried rice. This is actually one way to tell if a place is good or not. There are a few individual dishes that I would normally order and from there, I would know if the place is good or not. These dishes include curry noodles, (vegetarian) bak kut teh and assam laksa.

Great Nature Enterprise has got curry noodles and assam laksa but not bak kut teh. So we tried the curry noodles and the sweet & sour oyster mushroom rice. I found the sweet & sour oyster mushroom to be a bit too sour for my taste — possibly a bit too much of vinegar. But the curry noodles was superb! I can dare say that it is one of the best curry noodles I have ever tasted, beating even those with real meat (remember… I only became a vegetarian about 5 years back). Even Mrs Tai agreed that the curry noodles was one of the best! Besides the curry noodles and sweet & sour oyster mushroom rice, we also had deep fried golden needle mushroom with pepper and salted. There was also a bowl of complimentary soup — watercress.

This evening, we went back there again. We wanted to find out if the quality of the curry noddles was consistent or not. We ordered the curry noodle, seaweed fried rice and deep fried butter mushroom.

We were not disappointed. The curry noddles is as good as I remembered it to be. The soup is thick! The portion is generous! I could see lots of vegetables and potatoes in the soup! Seaweed fried rice was nothing out of the ordinary but it is nice. It is not too salty. The same goes for the butter mushroom. It’s nothing extraordinary but it’s still nice. I preferred last week’s deep fried golden needle mushroom though…

This is definitely the place I would recommend family and friends, especially to try out the curry noodles! The food served does not really have an overpowering taste. They are not bland either. Price is also quite decent.

Here are some photos of the food we have last week and this evening…

The very good curry noodles

Sweet & sour oyster mushroom rice

I like this dish as well… Deep fried needle mushroom with salt and pepper

Complimentary watercress soup

Seaweed fried rice

Butter mushroom

The restaurant Great Nature Enterprise (vegetarian restaurant) is located at 194D & E, Jalan Sungai Putus, Off Jln Batu Belah, 41050 Klang.

And in case you can’t find it, you can call them at +60 3 33446107. Or better yet, tell me you wanna buy me a meal and I’ll be more than happy to take you there.

Oh ya… Wishing everyone Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri!

How to annoy your customer…
A: Answer the phone with an indifferent tone to send the message that you don’t care why the customer called…

How to annoy your ex-customer…
A: Call your ex-customer and ask them how you can win them back. Promise to send them a hardcopy of your offer and then break the promise…

I recently called Hatch Home Concept to find out how I can go about making the payment for my sofa as well as the expected delivery time. The person who answered my call first asked for my name in a very, very indifferent tone. He then put me on hold and then got back to me 15 seconds later asking me to call back in 10 minutes time because the salesperson I wanted to talk to was on the phone. Hmmm… When I called back 10 minutes later, I got the speak to my salesperson. Even she spoke to me in that indifferent tone. Honestly, if it wasn’t the fact that they had good reasons for me to pick their sofa over Recliners and Sofas, I would not have been their customer… If salesperson can behave like that, I wonder what can I expect from after-sales person…

Maxis called me on Tuesday. They asked me if there is anything they could do to make me revert back to Maxis. They said there will be ZERO moving cost. Everything is FREE. They even suggested a phone plan for me as well a free phone offer. I asked them to email or fax over the details to me so I could do a comparison. Maxis said they would email and fax me the next day… Wednesday came and left. Same for Thursday. It’s now Friday… Maybe they got the wrong Adrian Tai?

Anyway, nowadays when a Telco tells me its ZERO moving cost and everything is FREE, I get skeptical. I’m quite sure Digi told me the same thing and I found out later that I was charged rm10 for stamp duty. Two lines means rm20. I’ve yet to actually make an official complaint — will probably do so sometime next week. Must work up my ‘machine-gun’ mood first…

This morning, I left my house at about 845am. This is very late for me but I had a good reason. I was attending a conference call from my home that morning.

I was on my way out with Mrs Tai when I saw something slowly crossing the road. We realised it was a tortoise! Yikes… What is it doing in the middle of a residential area? Was it someone’s pet? I stopped my car by the roadside and picked it up. Walked over to the nearest house… I could see this house has got a water feature Hmmm… Could it be the tortoise’s home? I rang the door bell and asked the owner… Nope, they don’t have any pet tortoise.

I was in a hurry and the next thing I could think of was this very good neighbour of ours. She and her family are real animal lovers. I know they love animals and nature. I guess if they are at home, I can probably pass the tortoise to them first…

I was lucky… They were still at home. Managed to explain to her about the tortoise’s adventures on the road and she was more than happy to keep the tortoise while we figure out what to do with it — most likely we’ll release it into the lakes near our place this coming weekend.

Just sharing some photos our neighbour managed to take after we left…

The tortoise

The tortoise having a drink after exploring our neighbour’s garden

This is one adventurous tortoise.

Later in the evening when I dropped by my neighbour’s place for a visit, she told me that a patch of water convovulvus (kangkung) started to grow in her garden about 1-2 weeks ago. The kangkung is viewed locally as the tortoise’s favourite food.

If not for the conference call that early (a first for me), I would not have ‘met’ the tortoise… All fated?

In case you have not realised, Derrell and Su Fei have their own blog now!

Visit them at: thechinsblog.wordpress.com.

And congratulations to Mr and Mrs Chin… 1st Anniversary!

I have been spending most of my free time on weekends and at night playing Warzone Tower Defense on Facebook.

Tower Defence seems like a relatively simple game. You mission is to just protect your base from enemy attacks by building defense towers that shoots at your enemies as they pass by. But it can get really addictive as you try to plan out the best way to defend your base.

It gets more interesting when you have friends (and BUGdies) who can’t stand seeing you having highest score among friends… heh heh…

Within a week after I ‘taunted’ some of thems, my high score has been trashed… Either my friends are really good, or I suck at games…