I was woke up by Huey Fang this morning for a bad news.. laying on the grass next to the pond was a dead koi. Appearantly jumped out after pondering the thoughts of how it would be like to live out of water, perhaps inspired by some old school Chinese stories like the Monkey God, thinking that it too, can become a god. blargh.

omgwtfbbq.. sien

The koi was a shiro utsuri, we like to call it the cow, since it’s got the New Zealand cow’s spots, but not a dalmation’s, mind you. White background and black pattern. I got this koi from the farm at Kelana Jaya near the small Giant. Right opposite of the excellent steamed rice place. The final price too, was haggled with the help of FA’s mom, how cool was that?

14″ already you know!

From some 10″ this fella grew up to 14″, a decent size for a beautiful koi.. now dead. A very sad day indeed. I lowered the water level by 2″ and might set up some form of barrier, perhaps sacrify some asthetics to safety.. We’ll see. This is the 2nd occasion, few months ago a black and orange koi simply dissapeared. I am guessing it’s the same thing but the cat took it.

Anyone wanna sponsor me some nice Japanese Kois?

Posted by KY | 33 Comments »

After posting about the seafood porridge at PJ state, there were a few people, including Saygore and Pam who left comments saying that I should check out the Lou Ngap Fan (卤鸭饭), or “loh” duck rice. So we did just that on a Saturday evening.

even got paranomic shot, stim or not?

Now as opposed to the more common roasted duck rice, this place serves the Lou Ngap (that’s in Cantonese). Instead of roasted, the duck is cooked in a thick gravy with lotsa flour, much like Loh Mee style.

are you hungry now?

We ordered a whole duck for the 6 of us, add sides dishes of salted vegetable, Chinese mushroom, boiled egg, and pork with vinegar. The duck was pretty awesome, with just the right texture, not too hard nor overly oily. The sauce/soup was in just the right viscosity, though I’d imagine it won’t be terribly good if it gets cold, but with 6 hungry souls, we never had that problem.

The pork was commendable, the mushroom goes well as a side dish, the eggs were alright. However, the salted vegetable is something rather interesting, it is served as is, with nothing accompanying. It wasn’t really very salty at all and does serve as a very good compliment to the duck. Much like how those marinated ginger goes well with sashimi in way of washing off the prior taste so that your taste bud is leave afresh for another bite. Highly recommended.

don’t you love those bank logos?

The stall starts serving at around 5pm and ends whenever they run out of duck, usually around 9pm or so. Give it a try if you’re around the area. You got the map anyway, right?

Also, check out spymy, a digg clone but concentrate more on regional blogs. A good compliment to pps & blogsmalaysia I’d say, give it a go.

Posted by KY | 16 Comments »

It was probably more than year since we went to Nong and Jimmy Thai BBQ Seafood place the last time. A place we usually refer to as “that Cheras tomyam place”, though it is actually located in Taman Cahaya and geographically not even really in Cheras, but Ampang instead. Last friday 5 of us decided to do treat ourselves some good ol’ favorites.

we ordered up a feast

ST, faggot, margie, kerol and I got to the restaurant and luckily was able to find a table without much hassle though it was a busy friday night. (I called suan but she didn’t manage to pick up.. ) The restaurant is more like a roof with some light fixtures and fan over concrete surface where they put lots of cheap tables and chairs. Do not expect air conditioning or comfortable chairs, they concentrate on food, not comfort nor the whole dining experience thingy.

ST, faggot, margie, & kerol

We ordered a basket of BBQ cockles, a claypot tomyam, BBQ prawns, BBQ stingray fish, fried squid, and kailan vegetables to go with some fried rice that includes big juicy prawns in it. The claypot tomyam and the BBQ prawn is a must, tomyam is served with prawn and squid as the main ingredients. The tomyam here tastes a little different from those that you get from mamak restaurants or Malay outlets, it is a little closer to authentic Thai flavour, we like it.

cockles, prawns, special chili sauce with peanuts, BBQ fish

Not everyone eats cockles, but if you do, do not pass it up. The chili sauce with peanuts goes very, very well with the BBQ cockles, and basically other BBQ dishes like BBQ prawns and fish. The fried curry squid was pretty good too and provided a nice departure from having too many BBQ dishes. You can order white rice to go with the dishes, but to really get some serious prawn overdose, go for the fried rice instead.

claypot tomyam, fried rice, squid, vege

Needless to say, we gobbled up everything and had happy stomachs to kick start the weekend. You can too, check out the patented map!

oh such lovely map

Posted by KY | 24 Comments »

a cool and soothing atmosphere

Been a while since I posted anything on the koi pond, thougt I’d just show you noobs how sweet it looks now and explains a little about the koi pond filteration system that I had set up. The filter system is designed to require very low maintenance, and at the same time, provide a superb condition for koi to live in.

But first, lets take a look at a couple snaps I took of the pond. The plants are now growing pretty tall as compared to just a couple months ago. You can compare it with this koi pond post that I wrote a few months back on September, and also this one from August. Huge difference isn’t it? However, the green and white plants are invaded by caterpillar recently and that has inhibit the growth quite a bit. The bamboo lookalike and the red leaf plants, however, has been going bezerk. The bourgonvilla is a new addition thanks to FA.

look at the nice gardening job

the kois grew quite abit too

Now lets get a little more pro and talk about the koi pond filter for a bit. Noobs like you might need a little fishy lesson and KY’s here to provide, worry not.

Koi, like any other fish, produces waste. The primary contribution of fish waste would be ammonia, and kois don’t particulary like their living environment to be of high ammonia content. Which bring us to the why the biological filter is needed: To create an eco system that will consume koi waste and keep the water parameter in safe and healthy level for the fish.

first and second chamber of the koi pond filter

My filter is of the simple and old school 5 chamber variety. The first chamber is the settlement chamber, I leave a small net to catch bigger particles and also left the chamber empty to catch any heavy sinking debris. The 2nd chamber is filled with Japanese mat. The purpose of the mat is not so much filtration of particles, but to provide a surface for bacteria to colonise. The bacteria here serves the purpose of converting Ammonia to Nitrite, which is a bit more tolerable by the kois.

third and forth chamber of the koi pond filter

I had filled the 3rd and 4th chamber with bio balls and bio stones respectively. These too are mediums for which different types of bacteria will colonise and make up the biological filtration system. The 2nd type of bacteria will convert the Nitrite to Nitrate.

fifth chamber of the koi pond filter

Brush occupies the last chamber. I had added this as the last step simply because I bought the brush the latest. Thiese too serve the purpose for bacteria colonization. As to which type of bacteria thrives best on which surface, I don’t have a simple scientific way to find out. Then again, my filter system works just fine, with healthy water parameters.

plants to soak up the Nitrate

So, if you’re following me, the Ammonia is converted to Nitrite, then to Nitrate. Well, the kois don’t really love Nitrate either, though they tolerate it much better than Ammonia. Hence this is where the plants come in to make the full eco system, apart from the healthy coating of algae on the wall and bottom of the pond, I have added a few rooted money plants to soak up the excess Nitrate. As a bonus, they are rather asthetically pleasing, I am trying to grow them around the water fall area.

flushing the filter

To keep the pond clean, I simply flush the 3 bottom outlets of the filter for about 10 seconds each daily. Usually in the morning when I feed them. When the flushed water gets to be somewhat green, all I need to do is to shake the filter elements and flush all the dirt out. The process takes not more than half an hour and only need to be done once a couple months.

Awesome, isn’t it? Don’t you wish you have a koi pond too?

Posted by KY | 22 Comments »

This is actually my 2nd time having chocolate fondue at this Choz place in KLCC. Some of you who read terence’s blog might have come across his post on the same subject. Since it was not quite a right experience having that type of treats with a guy, I decided to set things right this time by having a proper female companion.

look at that strawberry!

Now some of you noobs might have not heard of fondue and be wondering wtf it is. Basically chocolate fondue is steamboat western style. Instead of meat, fish, and vege, you get fruits. In place of soup, there’s chocolates. Where there should be the fire/stove, you get a tiny little candle. Best of all, you get the same calorie intake from the chocolate despite it being just a snack.

Since I’ve had the dark chocolate fondue, I decided to go for the white variety this time and settled for the white mango fondue. It came with cubes of apricot, apple, banana, kiwi, grapes, strawberry, mushmellow, and not nearly enough warm white chocolate in liquid form.

The philosophy of ying and yang plays a role in this dish. The contrast, the warm chocolate and cold fresh fruits, the hard and crunchy texture versus the liquified cocoa product… or something like that. heh.

bad idea….

We decided to be smart asses and tried to BBQ the mushmellow with the candle, I think you can see the results.

Anyway, Choz is at 3rd floor of KLCC, right below the 4th floor food court. A pretty nice place serving everything chocolates, you should try it sometimes unless you are strictly a starbucks or coffeebean person, but that gets old…

Posted by KY | 20 Comments »