dailyramblings101

My durian story is going to be a three-parter and this is the second one. Bear with me.  

The durian is a seasonal fruit. It takes about five to eight years (and sometimes longer for the more traditional species) for the tree to mature and bear fruits. The fruit ripens on the tree and will fall down to the ground. Then the fun begins. When I was small, it was so much fun “hunting” for the fallen durian and bring them back to the “wakaf” or hut that each durian orchard will normally have.

These “wakaf” is used for those manning the durian orchard (it is after all, quite a valuable fruit) when staying overnight at the orchard. Looking for fallen durian can be quite hazardous though! Not only that you have to be careful in case any durian fruit falls on your head, you need to contend with animals roaming at night and even the so-called “hantu durian” or Durian ghost. The were stories about how people would think they found a durian only to see that the durian have red eye looking at them! Scary!

Prices for durian can vary greatly. You may be able to buy about 5-8 durians for a mere RM10 (small durians, with little flesh) or you can splurge for one durian that can set you back as much as RM60 (there might be more expensive ones, but the most expensive durian we ever bought was a Muar’s durian at RM60).

This was our RM15 durian bought from Tesco as mentioned earlier in my post . The durian was bit too sweet for me. I like my durian to be creamy but not too sweet and I like them with full aroma. The more pungent the better. LOL

Next up, the different ways to enjoy durian.

Earth Hour is a global event organised by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and is held on the last Saturday of March annually.

Earth Hour began in Sydney, Australia in 2007. More than 2 million home and businesses shut off their lights for one hour, and from then on it became a global movement that in 2008, 50 million people around the globe participated in the said earth movement.

Last Saturday, on March 29 at 8.30pm, those who vote for Earth turned off their lights for an hour. Turning off our lights for n hour is a symbolic gesture to create global awareness about earth’s current situation. With awareness, there will be more people encouraged and willing to help in finding solutions and create a better

In Malaysia, many of its famous landmarks and skyscrapers plunged into darkness by switching off to mark Earth Hour which includes Petronas Twin Towers, the historical Sultan Abdul Samad Building, Angkasapuri, Menara TM, Menara Maybank, Istana Budaya, Kuala Lumpur Hospital and National Heart Institute. Major shopping malls turned off non-essential light that night in support of Earth Hour.

What did we do during the Earth Hour? Simple -we turned off our lights. I turned off my laptop. Son didn’t watch TV. Instead we hung around at our balcony enjoying the night’s air and talking to each other. One hour may not be enough, but as mentioned earlier, it is a symbolic gesture and it is a start.

But what next after Earth Hour? Do you wait for another year to pass to be aware of our precious Earth? Do you turn back on all your light after 9.30pm? Did Earth Hour changed how you used energy today? How about doing this more than once in a year? How about re-looking into our energy consumption on day-to-day basis?

What will your post-Earth-Hour changes be in your life?

And I am joining the Bloggers Care For The Earth Link Love Chain even though it is a few days late already. Hey! It is never too late to care for our Beloved Earth, right?

Renny - Norway
EastCoastLife - Singapore
A Changing Life - France
Bill - Arizona, USA
Heart of Rachel - Batangas, Philippines
Life Ramblings - KL, Malaysia
Marzie - KL, Malaysia
Jean Chia - KL, Malaysia
LifeCruiser - Stockholm, Sweden
Sassy Mom - Manila, Philippines
foongpc - KL, Malaysia
Jade - Singapore
Lina - KL, Malaysia

Photo of a Durian Tree. It was taken at the Botanic Park in Putrajaya in July last year.

Son and I ate a supermarket bought Durian the other day. RM15 for a mere 6 pieces of fleshy Durians is steep for me but at least both of us enjoyed them. (But I miss my Bentong and Raub Durians. They are not in season yet so I have to wait a few more months). There are however the Durian Kawin (clon durians) flooding the market, but for me; they are not as nice as a durian from a hundred year old tree.

At my part of the world (here in Asia and more specifically in Malaysia), the Durian is considered the King of Fruit. For those unsure what exactly is this fruit; the name “Durian” comes from a Malay word : “Duri”; which means Thorns. The Durian fruit has thorny skin and it is not for the faint hearted (or for those with sensitive nosebud too! ) I remember one time, we took home a car boot full of Bentong Durian and left in the kitchen as we can’t possibly finish them in one go. By the next morning, my sinus cleared up due to the smell! (It’s effect was akin to accidentally eating a spoonful of wasabi!)

The Durians has a very distinctive smell, and people either love it or hate it. The smell was described as akin to the smell of burning onions, toilets, animal carcass or rancid cheese (you get the drift). For me, the smell is heavenly. It is interesting to note that many westerners hated the taste and smell of this wonderful fruit.

There are many types of Durians in the market, with names like Red Prawn, Jiabili, Horlor, Mas Johor, D24, Cibei and Raja Kunyit.

Some examples on the different taste of different types of durians:
Red Prawn has orange reddish flesh is highly aromatic, very soft with a bitter-sweet taste. Horlor has very soft flesh and can be quite bitter.Raja Kunyit has the colour of the bright yellow flesh of this durian. It is very sweet and tasty.

I am no connoisseur of the fruit, all I know is that I like my Durian Tembaga (literally means Copper Durian). It is creamy, fleshy and the smell is heavenly.

My Dad prying open a durian fruit for me. And yes, I do know how to open one myself, but it is nice to be pampered by Dad sometimes. By the way, that one fleshy durian piece shown in the last photo was as big as three pieces of my supermarket bought durian.

Photo originally uploaded by MoonSoleil

What is this festival actually? Clear and brightness festival is the meaning of Ching Ming Festival. To put it simply, Ching means clean and Ming means brightness. Ching Ming is held on the day of the Third Moon 105 days after the Winter Solstice (usually on 4th or 5th of April). It is also known as the Grave-Sweeping or Ancestors Remembrance Day.

This date is also indicated on traditional Japanese calendars; the observance known as O-Bon and in Korean culture, the observance is known as Hansik.

Ching Ming rituals not only include weeding of the area, cleaning of the headstone, and replacing the wilted flowers with fresh ones, but also the lighting of incense and burning of imitation paper money. The burning of the imitation money is for the deceased to use in the afterlife. Food like roasted suckling pig, steamed chicken, fruit and wine are offered during the ceremony.

The responsibility to “hang san” or walk the mountain as visiting the cemetery/grave is commonly known, still falls to the eldest son. Nowadays, celebration may be much more simplified with offerings of only the incense, paper money and flowers.

Ching Ming is not a public holiday in Malaysia. However, this weekend, a few of my Chinese friends will be heading to their hometown for the Ching Ming Festival. They informed me that people can visit their ancestors’ graves a week prior to the Big Day and a week after. Those who’re heading off to their hometown this weekend are trying to avoid the crowd on the Festival Day.

Elsewhere, Ching Ming is a major public festival that is generally treated as an official holiday in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. It is considered unlucky to conduct business on this day, and as a result many businesses will be closed on the day of festival.

In less than two weeks’ time, this blog and Entrecard will part ways. I was hoping to delay this decision, as a bulk of the traffic from this blog did come from Entrecard, but the annoucement for us to remove the Entrecard widget had been issued and follow we must.

Anyway, by removing the widget, I’ll free up a couple of hours of my free time to spend on other things.

In the next few days, I’ll be spending time checking up on those blogs who always visited and dropped on me, and I will put up their link here. I’ve been quite lax in doing so earlier as I had the convenience of the Entrecard inbox to drop on others.

If you want me to put your links here, drop me a note, wiil you? However, I will not be putting any Tom, Dick and Harry’s link here. I am quite choosy too. I hope you understand.

As for those who bought ad from me, if you want to be refunded, do let me know too. Otherwise, I’ll let all the current queue run its course then I’ll remove the Entrecard widget. I also will not be accepting any more ads request.

It’s been good while it last, but I’m hoping that things for this blog will pick up once I free my time to do other meaningful stuff like commenting madly on your blogs! Watch out for me!

My younger sisters came to our house last week. Do you remember my posts about little sis getting married in June?

Well, she visited us partly because she wanted to pass her wedding invitation to us. She will quite busy meeting up with friends and relatives, as it is our custom that wedding invitation is handed over. It is crucial to invite all the relatives and putting their names on the invitation card (well, crucial for our family, at least) in case someone gets offended.

Those far away will of course get their invitation mailed. This is the time when one has to dust off the old contact book and call every s.i.n.g.l.e relatives we have (long lost or otherwise). 

My father will most probably help her to hand the invitation for relatives back home while she will make her rounds to our relatives staying in KL and nearby.

In a way, this custom is good as the family gets to use this excuse to keep in touch and contact each other.

Staying in a small town, one has to be mindful of the feelings of everyone and if you happen to leave out a name, the person might take offense at you, albeit you did it unintentionally. Saving face is extremely important in our Malay culture. And there is no such thing as too big  a crowd for the wedding in my Mom’s book. I think if she gets her way, the whole population of Raub will get invited!

Gosh! Who said getting married is easy?

It was nice to get rain this morning after a few days of hot sunny days. I love sunny days but I like them when I’m in the comfort of my own home.

Had to suffer through a hot sticky night yesterday, with me tossing and turning every few minutes.

Sunny days are good for vacations, especially if I am planning to spend time near water. There’s nothing better than splashing in water during a hot day, don’t you agree?

Which of these would you prefer to spend during a hot day?

A cooling time at a waterfall

A nice hot relaxing time at the beach

Or a splashing wet time in the pool?

For me, I love them all!

I am a fussy woman. I admit that. For this one reason, I have to be choosy when deciding on a place to stay during our vacations.

I can suggest plenty of places to Hubby, but I guess because Hubby knows me so well, he usually will not agree with any of my more adventurous destination/hotel suggestions.

I have this bad habit of checking every singe nook and cranny for spots and dusts and woe to any hotel that fall short of my expectation. And poor Hubby will suffer through my rant for the whole trip. He will keep quiet when I make a point to complaint to the hotel manager. Poor guy.

If any of these hotels were in Malaysia, and didn’t make a point to remedy my complaints, they can be sure a letter of complaint will go to the relevant body and to the Hotel’s GM.

There is one hotel where we used to be a regular guest, the GM of Rooms will come and personally greet us every time we check-in. Now, isn’t that such an ego booster? (And of course, I never complain when they upgraded us to two-bedroom suite instead of a deluxe room) .

But I do have a soft spot for friendly staff at hotels. Sometimes, the staff in Malaysian hotel can be quite snobbish to fellow Malaysians and I resent this. I am paying the same amount of money for the same perks enjoyed by other visitors.

There are of course, outstanding hotel staffs that I’ve meet, and for them I’ll make sure a note of praise and commendation will reach their GMs.

What is actually the point of this post? I don’t know. LOL

Just a bit of nonsense on a hot sunny day, I guess.

Anyway, it’ll be another 11 weeks for our next vacation. That’s in June. June is such a long way to go. I need a bit of R&R now!!!

Anyhoo, what’s your bad habit?

It was a nice sunny weekend on both Saturday and Sunday. The sun was shining, the sky was bright and clear, the breeze was cooling. I love sunny days. Sunny days make me want to go out and do stuff. It is funny that I like to run on my treadmill when it is sunny (and hot) rather than on colder days.

On sunny days, I love to air our home and let the ray shine into the house. I will open all windows and draw the curtains. No dark spots in our home! I guess we are lucky, Hubby and me; to buy a house that despite the sun shining in, does not feel hot. There’s always a nice gentle breeze outside. We don’t even have an air-condition at home!

I like rainy days too, but rainy days make me want to curl up and be lazy (well, lazier than usual. ) I don’t even want to contemplate having a shower on rainy days! LOL (I know, I’m such a kambing!)

Kambing or goat is what we call people who are lazy to take a shower/bath in Malay. Why? Because a goat does smell bad, I think.

What type of day do you like. Hot sunny days? Cold rainy ones? Snowy days? (No snow in Malaysia!)

For vacation, I do enjoy the bracing air of Spring and the flowers that bloom during the season.

Like I said on my earlier post, both Son and I went to KLCC for a visit to Petrosains.

Petrosains is an interactive Science Discovery Centre that presents a story of science and technology of the petroleum industry in a fun way. The concept and content not only revolve specifically around petroleum science, but also embrace all other aspects of general sciences. It is designed as a modern museum that allows visitors to interact with the exhibits on display.

Dinotrek is a fun exhibition of the dinosaurs. There are plenty of interactive exhibits there and a visit to the exhibition will even help demystify common myths associated with these prehistoric creatures.

I had made a telephone booking earlier, by calling the reservations line at 03-2331 8181. It is better to make the reservation beforehand as I can choose the entry time to both Petrosains and Dinotrek. If you buy the tickets as a walk-in customer, your entry time to Petrosains might be a few hours away as Petrosains uses time-ticketing concept. AFter all, Petrosains seems to be a popular spot for parents to bring their kids while shopping at Suria KLCC.

When we were there, those who were queuing for tickets at 11.00am were actually buying tickets for the 1.00pm slot. That’s 2 hours’ away! Lucky there’s the Suria KLCC for them to window shop and KLCC Park to walk around!

Petrosains is located at Level 4, Suria KLCC.We got a combo ticket for both Dino Trek and Petrosains for RM15 for me and RM5 for Son. More info of Petrosains here . p.s Lynne - was your photo on the screens when we exited (while taking the spherical thingy?