Fellow bloggers, here’s a chance to win something really significant – a trip to London during the Summer Olympics!
How? Be hand picked by a panel of celebrity judges to become a Samsung Global Blogger, and you will find yourself in London for the biggest show on earth, discovering what the city has to offer.
But exactly how?
Well, it is fairly simple, submit a 30 second video in English of you telling us why you would be great at hunting out the best stories London has to tell during The Olympics. The judges will be looking for the following qualities:
That isn’t so difficult now is it? (I think I should come up with one myself soon here!)
Incidentally, today is exactly 100 days before the start of the Olympics!
Go to samsungglobalblogger.my.msn.com and find out everything you need to know about how to become a Samsung Global Blogger. There are also tips on making great videos as well. If you love to make videos and share what’s going on over social media, you need to participate in this.
And here’s what Jamie Oliver has to say:
The deadline for audition videos is before midnight GMT on April 29th. The competition is open to those who are from UK, France, Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, Belgium, Brazil, China, Germany, the Netherlands, Russia, Spain and Thailand
If an apple a day keeps the doctor away, a glass of Strongbow might put the doctor out of business for at least a month.
While the carbonated and golden apparence of Strongbow might deceive some as just another premium beer, this golden goodness is actually made from 50 different types of apple juice, fermented of course. The reason for these many types of apple is to achieve a taste that guarantee it’s premium quality.
Mom says drinking juice is good, so why not 50 in 1, right?
Strongbow comes in draught (check location here) as well as in bottles (best enjoy over ice)
When it comes the word premium and sports, nothing quite represent those two words closer than sailing, and it is in this prestigious sports that Strongbow partners with Baby Tonga – a Beneteau 53f5 owned by Antony Hastings.
Baby Tonga is returning this year to the Raja Muda Selangor International Regatta (RMSIR) in an attempt to capture her third victory at the race – a hattrick.
Along with Sydney to Hobart and the Rolex China Sea Race, RMSIR is the only South East Asia regatta recognised by the prestigious London based Royal Ocean Racing Club. This isn’t some small race.
So you might ask, what does Baby Tonga and the RMSIR has to do with you, my dear readers?
Well, more about that later, but first here are some facts about Baby Tonga.
This yacht is the epitome of power and grace, and the reason this might interest you is that you (and maybe me?) has a chance to win a cruise aboard Baby Tonga by participating in this Facebook game on Strongbow Malaysia’s facebook
Access the facebook game here, then key in your information and start playing.
The game is pretty straight forward, sail as fast as you can with arrow keys towards the finishing point, then answer 3 trivia questions for added bonus. My lousy first attempt was over one minute, but that time will be cut short by a lot, look out!
The prizes:
I don’t know about you, but a chance to be on this brilliant sail boat, that’s gotta be a golden opportunity that only comes very very rarely.
I’ve personally never sailed before, but Haze did (on her blog post here), and according to her it was an experience of a life time, and that wasn’t on a luxury speedster like Baby Tonga.
Imagine sitting on the deck on this beautiful boat while the sun is setting, or standing at the very front of Baby Tonga feeling the wind blow on your face while the sail boat is cutting through water. That would be an awesome feeling. I want to be on it!
Good luck folks, and bring your anti seasick pill cos we’re not gonna waste any of these awesome cider aboard Baby Tonga.
Strongbow at Royal Oak, Jaya One
In the mean time, I shall enjoy a pint of Strongbow. 
Over the first three weeks of October, I was involved in the Malaysia’s First Ever Blogger MasterChef Challenge, an event by Astro Ria to promote MasteChef Malaysia that is currently aired on Astro Ria channel 104.
For those who are in the dark all these while, MasterChef is a cooking reality show originally started in UK and now found its way to a few dozen countries, including Malaysia! The competition only allows amateur cooks to compete, the participants are everyday people who shares a passion for cooking.
You can catch MasterChef Malaysia on Astro Ria, the details as follow:
The Blogger MasterChef event had 40 participants broken into 2 sessions, with the top 5 from each session compete at the final. Together with a professional chef (Chef Ryan Khang) and a representative from Astro Ria (Azlin Reza Azmi), yours truly was also chosen as one of the judges in this competition.
While the TV version has amateur cooks participating in it. Participants from this version are all bloggers.
GROUP 1 – 1/10/2011 – The Cooking House
The ingredients for the first 20 participants was chicken breast. Participants were given 2 slabs of chicken breast, a variety of ingredients, and condiments, a frying pan, and one hour to work with.
Other than the frying pan, there were also oven and microwave. There was no limit in the number of ingredients one can use either.
The above are just four of the 20 dishes, and to be honest I was very impressed. Many of these dishes not only tasted good, they look quite awesome too.
There were dishes with distinctive Malaysian taste, while others looked like something out of a high class restaurant. Chicken breast isn’t one of my favorite, but I took a few extra servings from some of these dishes.
Scoring on the invention test (the dish) was separated into 2 categories – maximum of 10 points for presentation, and another 10 for taste. For the skill test, Chef Ryan showed the contestants the proper way to make a poached egg (the instructions here), and another maximum of 10 points can be obtained.
This was my first stint as a judge in any competition, and short listing the top 5 from a group of 20 turned out to be a tougher job than I imagined, after tallying and some deliberation, we finally got it. It wasn’t an easy decision.
GROUP 2 – 8/10/2011 – The Cooking House
For the second group of 20 participants, instead of chicken breast, the main ingredient was fresh prawns.
While prawns are faster to cook and perhaps easier to season, the participants had to time their dish properly to ensure that the seafood does not stay on the table for too long before served.
Again, there were a lot of different creative ideas exhibited in this round. My particular favorites being the prawns lollipop on pineapple (pic above, bottom right corner) and the lemongrass prawn paste satay. Good stuff!
Raqim Ahmad from Astro Ria replaced Azlin as the judge in this round, after another poached egg skills test, we arrived at the final 5 contestants for the final round.
FINAL – 15/10/2011 – SACC Mall, Shah Alam
The final for the First Ever Blogger MasterChef was a much bigger deal, the venue was at the entrance of SACC Mall in Shah Alam. A stage was set up with 2 rows of temporary “kitchen” prepared for our 10 short listed contestants, and there was also the famous host, Zainal Alam Kadir from Astro emceeing for the event.
I think the invention challenge of the day threw a lot of contestants off a little, the content of the Mystery Box was none other than the one ingredient most of us had never handled before – Avocado.
Personally I’ve only had avocado in sushi and in Carl’s Junior’s burger (guacamole sauce). If I was competing, I’d probably had to google for a recipe (cheating already, hahaha)
The format of the competition was also slightly different, while there were many different condiments and secondary ingredients to choose from in the first two rounds, there were only 20 different ingredients/condiments in which each contestants was only allowed to choose 10 items within 30 seconds.
The limitation though, brought the best out of the participants.
Check out some of the dishes that the contestants managed to conjure up with. On the top left we have something that looks like a salad but with pancake ribbon (ultimately the winning dish), on the top right there’s the avocado “sushi” using egg as the skin and bread as the “rice”. It was another exhibition of creativity and cooking skills.
For the skill test, Chef Kerlley (replacing Chef Ryan) demonstrated a professional way to dice onion, and the contestants were given 15 onions each to see how many they could dice up in 10 minutes. At the end, no one managed to dice more than 3-4 onions, and 6 of the 10 contestants somehow managed to cut their fingers with the supplied ceramic knife.
I suppose this is to show that these are all amateur cooks, no?
After some deliberation and tallying up the score, Yip Wan Yee was crowned the winner of the First Ever Blogger MasterChef Challenge, and she deserved it! To me her dish was not only creative, but nicely presented and tasted rather good too.
Wawa was the first runner up with her Mini Roti Puri filled with Avocado Custard on top of Creme Patissiere and top with Chocolate Ganache, not because of the longest dish name but for her daring attempt in the only pastry dish of the day, and it worked.
Mohd Zaid walked away with the best MasterChef Buzz blogger award, while the rest of the contestants received consolation prizes.
It was a pretty sweet competition, and really showcase the ability of so many young Malaysians’ cooking prowess. Now let me get back to the kitchen!
I’m not really a super huge football fan, but I do follow the Premier League and play futsal every week. For most people around here, MU is their team, and for the rest of us who does not harbor a super liking to MU, we often support a competitor, and in my case, it is Chelsea!
Yes, Chelsea supporters are often seen as bandwagon jumpers during Mourino days when they won a couple championships, but I’ve been a closet fan since the days of Zola when I first heard the song “chelsea chelsea!”, so sue me.
I’m sure there are many who loves Chelsea and manage to looked over their supposedly superior bank account (that title goes to Manchester City anyway), and their brand of football that is not often the most fluid, they play to win and usually don’t get much help from officials (unlike.. MU of course)
There is however, another football team that I support above all teams in the world, and that is our Yellow and Black team Tiger! The Malaysian team of course! The team that managed to win the Tiger Cup just very recently (how appropriate!).
This coming July 21st 2011 our boys will go against Chelsea at National Stadium Bukit Jalil (I went to their 2008 tour and it was awesome), and you too can be at this match by joining Celcom’s Channel X WHO WILL WIN Challenge. You stand a chance to win Autographed jersey and FREE tickets to the match, and here are the different ways to win:
Nuffnang is doing it again, and instead of just a usual movie screening (Made of Honour), this time it is something that really entices me, a movie screening with 8 course meal at JW Marriott! I am salivating just thinking of it, slurps!
I don’t care if I have to wear formal monkey suit, black shoes, or an evening gown, I just have to get my invitation to this event on 12th June, I can’t wait, I can’t wait!
My FlipFlop Flippy score, beat it,
Actually I was already playing this FlipFlop Flippy game from Hong Leong Bank when it was first launch, the thing is actually damn addictive. (goddamn electric eel!) So when I saw the email from Nuffnang, I know I should be able to do good enough to qualify. I tried it again and scored myself a respected 12750 grade “A” result!
Then I saw Tim online, and I figured I’ll challenge him on this, the dude was, as usual, way too overconfident and take on my Char Kueh Teow bet in an instant!
yeay free char kueh teow for me!
And he only did a 5400. Wahahahhaaha, lets see if he can do any better before the deadline. One eye pirate!
Update: Latest Score!
Wahahhahaha
Update: Latest Score again!!! at 20/5/2008!
I WIN I WINN!!
Update: More score!! 2/6/2008
WooHooo!!
