Georgetown : Annalakshimi, Temple of Fine Art

Just discovered this great eating place recently after moving over to Jelutong.

Annalakshmi is a project of Temple of Fine Arts International dedicated to bringing the joy of Indian culinary, visual and performing arts to the public. Annalakshmi operates Indian Vegetarian restaurants that are decorated with the art gallery-like splendor of Indian art and handicrafts. I have visited their center in Mid Valley once but these recent visits in Penang are awesome with great food and environment...relaxing after work.

the exterior of Annalakshmi

oups...blur photo...could not switch on the flash or else i ll be disturbing others there

Annalakshmi serves vegetarian buffet for lunch and for dinner they have wide variety of menu choices. My last visit to Annalakshimi was dinner with Jamie and my sister. We ordered many dishes that I missed dearly after my 77 days stay in India.

Jamie...'nice place and nice food in Penang'

my sis...we 2 very pandai critic...but this place has nothing for us to critic on...we love the food here

Best dish of all poori...fried version of roti. It is a thin crust with empty filling...I have made this before and it was interesting to see how a thin batter could turned up in this shape. It is best served with dall or non spicy curries and mango or coconut chutney.

Masala dosa...another of my favourite dish. This is a South Indian Cuisine. The spicy aloo filling was perfect.

Roti jala...yellow lines of flour and egg batter. Best to be taken with spicy curries.

Aloo paratha...yes another dish of aloo...this is very filling. It is made of wheat flour with aloo filling.

Indian pizza...the base was actually made of dosa. So it is juicier compared to normal pizza base. However this is good with Indian cheese topping.

Indian spaghetti...its' taste is unique. Lots of spices, less sour compared to napoleon sauce. Taste ok.

Their vegetarian fried bihun. This reminds me of my simple meals in India.

J___ dosa...could not recall its' name...It taste like ordinary dosa to me. No filling so less filling for your tummy

One of the side order which I can't recall its' name again...anyway this is good...better than their samosa.

For drinks, many preferred flavoured lassi but I personally like plain lassi better. It has stronger lassi taste...

This center serve with the motto : "Serve, Love, Give”. As it is run for charity purpose, no charges is imposed. However generous giving is much appreciated.

The centre is open every day except Mondays, and the restaurant serves food from 11.30am to 2.30pm for lunch, and 6pm-9.30pm for dinner. For details of the restaurant, shows or classes, call 04-228 8575. Do drop in at Restaurant Annalakshmi - 1, Babington Avenue, 10450 Penang.

Weekend in Seberang

This was a great weekend back in Seberang.

Saturday morning, I was supposed to go jogging at Mengkuang Dam but it was raining cats and dogs. I was already awake at 7am, so I spent sometime organizing my best collections of the past decades. My stamps, first day covers, coins and notes...much more effort to make them richer but these make me poorer :S

Fruits for breakfast and mum's fried rice for early lunch. Then I met up with Sue Nee for coffee talk and food hunt. First it was New Town Kopitiam white coffee. This was my first visit there. My aunt has been hard-sell New Town for quite some time. Their cold white coffee was good...for die hard coffee lover like me, this was surely better than Old Town's. New Town's white coffee is thicker and has stronger aroma, even with melting ice and dilution, it tasted good till the very last sip. It is also less sweet compared to Old Town's. For RM2.50, this was surely a value for money choice...a good place for hours of coffee talk as it has less crowd compared to Old Town.

New Town Kopitiam, Butterworth...better value for money

Rm2.50 Ice white coffee...thick coffee, less sweet

Then we headed to Apollo Market along Jalan Raja Uda. This was one of my common eating place till I moved over to BM. Even in BM, my siblings always made trip to Raja Uda just for the food here. In the morning market, we normally love to eat Wu Kok, the fried Yam Puff and 大肥's Loh Mee '卤面'. For noon time, we love the porridge '粥', tomyam mee, banana fritter 'pisang goreng', muar chee and fishballs. But as we arrived late today, nothing available except the RM1 snack, muar chee.

After buying, we headed over to the Tow Boo Kong Temple '北海斗母宮'. This was my first visit here though I have been staying in Butterworth for more than 20 years and my old house was within 3 km distance :-| The interior and exterior of the temple was really impressive. The 9 magnificent dragons carving in the inner courtyard was stunning.

the front view of 北海斗母宮

really admire the complexity of the 王 roof

there is dragon '龍' everywhere

the entrance to the main altar...九皇大帝

九皇 at the stunning well decorated inner courtyard

guess what is this? A drum high up on the tower...unreachable to public yet useable for devotees

that was the tower that house the drum

Next, we went to another new place in Butterworth for me. This round we went to the Butterworth Cafe. This cafe was few steps away from my form 6 alma matter and has been there since 1958, yet this cafe is unknown to me. Anyway this was another eating place recommended by auntie.

Butterworth Cafe, established in 1958...as old as my parents yet was unknown to us until recently

Our starter was tomato soup. It was a light cream base tomato soup...not too creamy and not too sour, with the garlic bread, this was a perfect combination starter. For main course, we ordered a fish cordon blue and black pepper chicken. The black pepper chicken was really very delicious...very strong black pepper taste with a little sweetest and juicy chicken...yummy. The fish cordon blue was good. Crunchy bread crump crust with overflowing thick cheese and ham filling...delicious but can be perfect if it was chicken. I believe chicken cordon blue would be better because fish was juicier, diluting the cheese filling. We finished our meal with their famous Tiramitsu...cheesy and strong coffee aroma.

Tomato soup...recommended!

exceptionally well for black pepper lovers...

'chunch, chrunch, chrunch'...chrunchy crust of the fish cordon blue...

the overflowing rich cheesy filling

yummy Tiramisu...RM5 only...must eat!

We ended our outing today window shopping at Sunway Carnival Mall and a visit to FOMOS Orchid Roadshow. Lots of beautiful orchid being exhibited here and lots more up for grab.



Sunday was a slow day. I went jogging at Mengkuang Dam in the morning then dim sum in BM. Then spent a little time on The Star. In the afternoon, my mum prepared another big feast for me and my sis...yes...again I am the delivery girl for my sis...This time my mum prepared sweet sour prawn, black pepper chicken, steamed fish, fried Pak Choi and Tapioca dessert....yummy!

my mum's sweet sour prawn...I love mummy!

Before I crossed over to Jelutong, I purposely made a round to Bukit Minyak Industrial Park. I wanted to get a few great shots of the recently famous Penang Sakura. I have witnessed this heavenly scene here but was sad to learn that the glooming season of the flowers were so short. There was none...not even a single bud around. Last week, they were still glooming beautifully in white, pink and purple covering the trees and floor. :-( Anyway I am happy to be able to witness this myself.

Here are more photos from visitpenang.gov.my by TY Lim

the Tabebuia Rosea...Penang very own Sakura

...looks like Sakura don't they?...have not seen any Sakura in real yet

yes..there are few tones of colour

Finally back in Jelutong...movies and dramas marathon...

P.S : please bare with my poor quality photos. I could not find my lumix charger anywhere. So Lumix was not functioning now and my bro's G10 was in use by himself over the weekend.

What's best for Penang?

It is really sad to learn that we have such a short sighted MP in Malaysia.

MP Datuk Bung Mokhtar Radin (BN – Kinabatangan) questioned the rationale of 2nd Penang Bridge.

This Datuk wanted to know the rationale for spending RM4.3bil for the bridge, adding: “If RM4.3bil is to be given to the poor rural folk, how wonderful. They will be elated especially now, when the economy is not doing well. Voters in Kinabatangan will be thankful for that.” I wonder if he is aware how much Penang has contributed to the country's GDP.

On another development plan by the state govement

CM defends tiger park idea


At a glance, I think this will be a very cool idea to develop Penang tourism sector but thinking twice, it is true that we need to take many factors into our consideration.

Factors to consider

1. Safety of the general - Precaution steps to asure the safety of the people
2. Safety of the giant cat - Are we able to provide them a natural habitat and will this project affect them in any ways?
3. Enviromental issue - this project may involves 100-acre Relau Community Park with many durian farms around the area...any major changes to this place to accommodate to this project?
4. Continuity of the mega project - Will this project last or this is just merely a dream of YB Lim alone. Wondering what will happen if we are to invest millions here but the moment the Lim Dynasty is over, will this project be buried along?

I am not convience with this project but if the experds can provide all the supporting documents and able to justify the project, then why not? I am just one of the another concerned Penangites.

Anyway I only hoped for a better Penang. MPs, please do not politicise people's interest and our country's development!

Books I am on now

Recently I am back on my reading track. Spending minutes to hours daily before bed on the books.

I am currently on 'The Zahir' by Paulo Coelho. I have read few other of his great collections. Though his books were originally written in Portuguese, the translated English versions are equally that good. He is abled to describe the enviroment extremely well, making my imagination go wild with him. Every step and actions were pictured in my mind. I love his book for the theme that he delivers. It was not soley about love, he describes a lot about losses, pain and reality world.

So The Zahir is for my nights in Jelutong. Back in BM, I have 'The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference' by Malcolm Gladwell. This book describes about the three rules of epidemics and how they work with real life scenarios. I have never thought the survival of international brand like Hush Puppies is a tribute to this effect.

So moving on, I have another book in line for reading, 'Digital SLR & Photographing for Dummies'. So what even if it is a dummies collection as long as it is informative. This dummies collection is good enough for me to have it as a coffee table topic. I love photographing but have yet to own a DSLR. Let us see how much I can learn from this and if it is conviencing, then who knows if I may purchase another camera.

The World Across The Table

Hey I just got engaged to this new cool technology by Cisco.

Attended a meeting during lunch time just now with my boss who based in Folsom, US. The telepresence technology was marvelous. He seemed to be so near to us, when he was actually half a globe away from us physically.

This was pretty much like how we had it just now minus the content and size. We got a room with 3 screens on each side.



This was the same as the real one we have in our telepresence room.



TV add...very interesting

Sunset from My Room...overlooking Penang Hill and Bukit Jambul

Dusk in Penang

Penang Bridge during dusk

Jelutong Expressway

Jelutong

Batu Lancang and Greenland area


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1...2...3...4...5...6...7...Sunset at Penang Hill


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overlooking Bkt Jambul


glad to be able to witness this great view everyday