Salam~

Salam..

Wanna cut things short, this is the latest pic of the lab session from TEM and SEM 'fieldtrip' to IBS..

Incase my kids wants em..






Yosh.

Another set of rants..

Ops..its getting worse..

Actually i have tonnes of receipes to record here but just couldn't find a time to write and upload properly *sigh* this is getting me nowhere..i'm rather furious with my current research activities. Somemore, I'm feeling super down while being cramped up with so much work with so little time.

Am sorry for the layout that hurts people's eye when watching this blog..its suppose to be for a 3-panel layout, but i just haven't got the time to edit the html..the wallpaper was a custom made one, by me, from the latest illustration art on 1/2 ouji (half prince), a taiwanese manhua that i'm crazy about lately..the guy on the left is the main char named Feng Lan (or Prince, as his game name). The guy on the left is Gui ( fullname; Guillastes). I'll write a proper review later *scratching head* fcuk, my head is spinning..

Btw, I'm happy when i gotta know some of my students were furiously searching for this blog *laughing* I gotta say I'm pleased :) It's juz that it's rather personal, hence, I can't really give out the add rite? So it really is up to them to pursue for it huhu~

Dem, gotta finish this report i'm writing..need to send to my co-supervisor by tomorrow evening *sigh* i'm dem tired..

Well, my hot pick for today. A heart wrenching "Caruso", a Spanish song by Lara Fabian. She sings with deep feelings as if she experience it first hand. The best about this is that it has english translation at the bottom, so one can understand the meaning of the song..

haih..gudnite..

meaningless rant~

gosh..

another rant..

seriously, im like a dead fish here..its juz the 12th hour smpling..got 6 more samples..another 12 more hours..shall we go forward with a new dish to prepare? tapi mcm mls je nk upload gmbo T____________T aigooo...dilemma..dilemma.. am actually waiting for the centrifuge to spin another 3 more minutes to process the samples before proceeding with tests..

what did i ate today?

-corn flakes with full cream milk (bfast)
-1 twiggies perisa coklat (lunch)
-bihun sup pantas 15min siap! (got an egg, green onions, a sausage, and 1 tomato <- the only things in fridge, no time to do marketing) - ehem ini teatime :P -corn flakes, again (dinner) -2 dates, 2 biscuits (kuih raye, semperit n makmur)


BUTTTTT..

IM STILL HUNGRYYYYY!!! *scary gary* @.@ its like i have a bottomless pit.. *feeling at a loss*

ohh..at last the spinning has stopped..hehe

:)

3rd lab - determination of glucose content using DNS method

well, this time I'm too tooo tooooo lazy to take pics of the kids, and hell..those kids really know how to mess things up..the lab was done in 2 sessions (which means, 2 weeks consecutively) and then the eid hols comes in..dem..im lazy to talk..coz im actually waiting for the materials to be autoclaved.. (around 1hr more to finish).. y am i still at lab at 8.30pm of saturday ni? even to myself, it is still a wonder.


the concepts behind the sugar measurements was developed due to the solutions having no colour or odour whatsoever. hence detection was difficult. but that was WAY WAY WAY back then. this method is the cheapest (as in most economical), quite laborous, abit hazardous but rather precise in detecting total amount of simple sugar..which has been established a looooog time ago..what is simple sugar? simple sugar is the basic unit of carbs (i think so..pardon me if im wrong, i juz pour out frm my brain), which has 3 elements, C, H and O..aiya..carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atom..with the formation of C6H12O6..with the carbon acting as a skeleton..an extended shape has hundreds and thousands of C in them with different branchings..ehh..mcm melalut..

back to main topic..so basically, by having a standard curve that has been produced earlier with a known amount of gluose used, one can determine through the calculated amount of light that can pass through a certain solution..the darker the colour, the harder for light to go through kan? this is known as transmittant light at which reciprocating it will result in the calculation of absorbance.. (absorbance in this case means, how much light has been absorbed by the sample which can be detected by a spectrophotometer at UV-vis range)

so basically, its an easy lab..but the hardest part was to make the standard..u need to be super precise..if not, all ur work is a goner lah..

aigooo..lapa

ade keje nak wat lg tapi mls..

agar well xtest lg..

aigoo..

aigooooo... T_____________T|||||




*sigh*

Announcement 2 Abe!!!

Yosh2, selingan untuk sementara waktu;

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SYAHRIL AZEEM ONG!!!

*throwing confettis* *sending lotsa love*

Its my lil brother's birthday, he's turnin' 21. Sweet 21. I'm really happy for him since everything seems to go smoothly with his life. God bless to you my darling little brother. This onee-chan of yours will always root you all the way in your life! :)

Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday to Jijong,
HAPPY BESDAY TO YOU!!

When I go home, I'll cook everything that you like! Tomyam oso of course!

hehehehe

Kakya loves you lots and lots!

Love for Kulim ||| Food Review

Yeap, again I return to my hometown. BUT, with new purpose in hand, at which to celebrate the Ramadhan with my family members. This faithful occasion happened last week, on our Malaysia's Indepence Day holiday (31st Aug 2009), which means, I have an addition of 1 day to spend with my family :) O how I feel so blessed to sink in the arms of my momma. She's the best mum in the whole wide world. Its the same with my big sis, she the cool type. We do a lot of things together like really great buddies.

My 1st lil bro accompanied me through the onslaught; the travelling was horrid. We bought a ticket which promised us an 8.30pm Super Nice bus to Kulim (take note of the name, I was really being tricked by the name and the picture of the bus at the counter), instead we finally boarded a stupid,-I-duno-wat bus at 11.30 pm. Fish. totally Fish. like wat my bro wud say.

Doing this doing dat, yadda~ I'm home!

We really have fun at home. Eat2, play2, shopping, listened to Ami's (2nd lil bro) singing n guitar strumming~ It is enjoyable and stress-releasing.

One that truly leaves a sweet taste in my heart was my trip to Penang with Kak Kim for the sake of finding rare ingredients for cooking~<3 We moved out around 2 something and reach around 3..its actually really early when considering all the jams along the way.

The winding road that is very busy..lots of lorries go through here because they can cut through 1 highway toll.

My sister's driving. Obviously. I'm a loser when it comes to driving =_________=;;


The sea, from Gurney Drive's view..its a walk away from Gurney Plaza, the shopping mall we're heading to . Looks quite pretty right?

Quite a nice view dont cha think?

Think again.
This is the close up view of the rocks. pfft, what shameful eyesore. Promotion on how beautiful and clean Penang is? Come again? I don't quite catch which part is clean and beautiful. Upclose I mean, but this pic is not even microscopically close.

Me and mah big sis. Saje syiok sendiri XD



We bought our things here. Heck so expensive those imported stuff T_____T I can feel my hands shivered when I took out the dough from my purse *laughing* It's not that I that concern of the costs, but its way out of a student's budget..xpela, once a while mahh..



It took less than 2 hours to complete the tasks, we need to hurry home since we need to cook ait..lagi another 1.5hr of driving takut xsempat. Hence I board on the ferry to cross the ocean from Penang Island to the mainland. and the best of all its F.O.C. heheheh


Pics on the ferry. We didn't move much. Coincidently our car was parked just beside this so-called 'window'. So, drop by and take a snap2 :)

Dem I look fat @__________@||||

Hence the results of our heroic conquest were these; (which means the food review is starting)


Eggplant side dish~ Gajinamul


Steamed eggplant pieces marinated with soy sauce, red pepper flakes, crushed garlic and sesame oil. Add a little of sesame seeds with diced green onions, it'll turn so marvelous! People who can't stand the hotness and the taste of garlic, you can reduce the amount of such ingredients to turn your gajinamul into a mild one.


Stir fry noodles with vegetables~ Japchae

The noodles are special ones, made from sweet potatoes, with a mild sweetness and springy feeling when eaten. Also, it won't easily destroyed with heat since it has strength. The veges were stir fried with a lil bit of olive oil; spinach, carrots, green onions, shitake mushrooms and button mushrooms, later, being swirled by a wee bit of soy sauce as well as sesame oil. There's some thinly sliced beef as well to enhance the flavour. A bite will push you up to heaven! My eyes went starry at that point. It was soooo nice. Can't simply put it in words.


Vege soup with Ju hu Chiu

As the name implies, its vege soup with dried squid strips. The vege used was cabbages, the normal cabbages. The soup was rehydrating and refreshing. Yet the way of cooking was so simple. One must make use the garlic and some meat before adding hard veges inside.


Ayam masak merah/ Red cooked chicken (yeah, its a direct translation)

The chickens were deep fried first before proceeding to being transferred into a gravy made up of chillies, big onions and tomato blend in together. We can usually tastes this savoury during weddings and events since its one of the most popular dish which is accepted by all the races in malaysia.


Soy bean side dish with an addition of stir fry dried anchovies ~ Konjorim blends with Myulchi bokkeum



Yep, for malaysians it must looked like the normal fried anchovies with ground nuts right? Nononono.. These are soybeans that has been soaked for 8hours before being cooked with soy sauce, minced garlic and sugar. The taste? Simply marvelous~ yumyum! How to describe? Its sweet, its sticky..soooo addicting. The fried anchovies are actually stir frieds using a nonstick skillet without oil. Later, just mix them together into this purrrfection XD


Pizza from Pizza hut *lol*


Of course we didn't made these ourselves *laughing* The credit goes to Pizza Hut..To me the taste is so-so lah since the toppings are just moderate..But this is considered decent enough.One is chicken, another is tuna.


Papayas!

*laughing* as the name implies, this sweet full of fibre fruit graced our stomachs with its majestic abilities in helping our GIT tract. The sweetness is quite moderate, not so sweet and its abit hard. This means, its not that ripe despite the colour. But then, it is still considered nice.


Mushroom soup


Well, comes togather with the pizza of course. To my surprise it is not that bland like usual. Quite creamy and thick. Actually it is not so hard to made this, you just have to have some milk, corn starch, some chicken boillon, chunks of button mushroom and basil, wallah! a mushroom soup is ready! Since it is quite costly, I prevent myself from trying to make it. Let's see when the time comes, at which no monetary constraints has to be considered, I will definitely try it. haha.


Mooncake

Since the mooncake festival is not that far (i think it coincide with the hungry ghost festival right? not so sure), these cakes are everywhere. Kak Kim bought some for us to eat. Quite nice but supppeeeer sweet. My poor tooth can't stand it :P Let's see..how to describe the taste..buttery creamy red beany taste with extreme sugar content *lol* To people with sweet tooth, its the best for you guys.


Fried chicken blended with tumeric powder


This is a very traditional fried chicken swirled with some salt and tumeric powder. It is soo delicious and simple. No need all those extra-extra stuff. Good enough to be eaten with steamy white rice..mmmm *drooling* man..


Well, the food review ends here. Many occasions passed through before the completion of this post. Since this is so long that's why I took so much time. Next I'll talk about the makan-makan at my house in Serdang huhu..

Lab 2 : Determination of Albumin's isoelectrical point

Well, as can be seen, this time the kids havta pinpoint the isoelectrical point of albumin. What is an albumin? Albumin is a kind of protein that originates from egg, the egg whites. That's juz its pretty name *lol*. Well, as proteins is very sensitive. Like a high class lady. No heat, no acid/alkali, no harsh handling; nearly EVERYTHING will effect a protein. Once all these kinds of treatments hit the poor lil lady, she'll crumble and looses her shape.

Basic knowledge, a protein retains its shape through the help of alot of bonds; some hydrophilic, some hydrophobic; some are really strong, some are weak, but important. These bonds can be easily hydrolized even with mild treaments which will lead to percipitation. Some proteins will be able to resist; as the treatment condition ceased it can return to its shape, but some wouldn't do. Sadly speaking.

Hence, this lab is to educate the kids on how to think logically. Since proteins behave according to the charges they have, they will be positively charged (H+) if they're in acidic condition, and negatively charged (OH-) if they are basic condition.

What will happen if the nett charge is 0? Well, it will loose both charges and becomes a zwitterion. So, what do you think will happen to all the bonds? and consequently what will be the physical attributes of such proteins?

Think baby, think.These are my teammates, demonstrators for the lab sessions (in layman term, we functions like mods in forums on the net, some sort liddat). From left is Kak Anu, Kheng2 and HF. Only the hand of my dress can be seen at the upper corner of the pic *lol* and another gal is missing in action (she's abit at the back) :D

My supervisor gave a 1 hour lecture on photospectrometry, since it has not been covered before. The kids have to use a spectrometer to determine the transmitant light in order to calculate for the turbidity of the solutions they prepare.

This is the spectro they use. It harbours 4 unit cells for faster reading. But I discourage them to use it since the cuvettes used are plastic, which is very VERY susceptible to scratches, which leads to a not-so-accurate reading. Quartz is too expensive and fragile for them to handle.

Pretty kids :)

Moving here moving there. Few spectros have to be shared since equipments are not enough. But then again, this lab is actually more equipped compared to the lab that we use during our undergraduate studies. God, they should truly be thankful.


This team has to repeat again their work since the spectro they use are not stable. The reading flactuates terribly. Kesian..

So tired..today is not a nice day. Rain rain rain..makes me feel sleepy all the way..My head and my eyes hurt..Tomorrow my labmates are coming to my house to break the fast togather..

Birthdays 2009

Well, actually there's a birthday party thrown by my labmates last week :) It was a really nice one. For me, HF, Roger, PCF and Kok Wai..but Kok Wai was sick, he was unable to attend. This small party was done at Bukit Expo, and you know what? As a student for 4 years here, I actually didn't really know how to get there in my car *laughing* I was late some more coz of stomachache XD

Kak Irah cooked a super delicious you-dont-eat-you-die spagetti. I kept on licking the container of the gravy afterwards. There's also some drinks and a pretty cake.


D famous extremely mouth-watering spagetti... (I wan sumore T______T)

Everyone were eating..eating and eating...focus!

The cute 1.5kg cake from all labmates for us 4 (actually 3+1, Roger is not our labmate, but sort of a buddy..HF's bf)

PCF, Roger, HF and me hehe~ As if a guy with his 3 concubines XDXD
MF, Roger n HF :)
Iera wf our seniors..Kak Li Oon, Iera, Kak Anu..behind is Kheng2 :)

All in all, the party was awesome. I was forced by them to dip my nose into the cake.. gosh..btw the cake is from King's, really delicious, despite the cough syrup taste of the cherries haha

...mmm..tak saba waiting for my lil bro ni :) He's on the way to pudu to meet me. We will go back to our hometown today yay! *again?* yup! Home sweet home, here we come!

Lab session

Last thursday was the mark on the completion of the first lab session in Biophysical chemistry class that I've moderated with my labmates. I'm actually the only person from a different lab for this day. It's because I don't have classes anymore, my 3 other comrades have bioreactor systems exactly during the lab session, hence they are moved to friday lab sessions.

There are actually two lab session per week for this subject because the students involved are too many. More than 80. Half will go to thursday, another to friday. These kids are bright and optimistic, although abit clumsy. Some of them did prepare well before going for lab, but some didn't bother. However, the things that I realize is that, these kids really learn fast :) I'm rather proud of them.

Last week, we went for preparation of acetate buffer and calculating the buffering capacity using the Henderson Hesselbalch equation. Easy task. BUT, the kids don't really can understand instructions kot. Many times they did things wrongly. Its an easy experiment at which you only have to titrate 2M NaOH with your buffer and take the reading for every ml you put in and plot a graph. Maybe they're a bit impatient. But all in all, the real problems lies on the malfunctioning of nearly 1/2 of the newly purchased biuret. Many groups have to share. Dah la have to repeat. AIGOOO...


My supervisor was giving them some explaination aka lectures on buffer preparations. Kids, better listen carefully. You're gonna use em soon enough if you stay on biochems line of work.


Kusyuk habes! :) You don't concentrate, you're gonna dig yer own grave man..work can't finish, make mistakes sumore..repeat la...



Today (approx the next week), we will go for the determination of the isoelectrical point of egg albumin (protein) by reacting them with 0.1M Mc Ilvaine buffer which consequently will lead to the plotting of a curve. Let's see how's the kids fairing this time :)

Salam Ramadhan!

To all those Muslims out there, Happy Ramadhan! Today is the first day of Ramadhan, and I'm alone here..feel..erm..a bit sad actually..but toughen up! It's not a big deal.. *sigh* A friend of mine promised to drop by this weekend, but it seems she purposely 'forget' it..Well, I don't blame her though *shrugs* But, I've invited her, let her make her own call on this matter. I won't contact her to remind.

Btw, today, a package from Sarawak came. Its from my adopted big brother, Nibel-nii-sama. For my birthday. Its an album. He even wrote a haiku for me *happy*. Aniki has been a really great brother to me. He always give me moral support and advices. We even like the same genre of songs (which is very rare coz my friends said my taste is weird). Its an album from Akiko Shikata. Truly marvelous. I'd say 9 out of 10. These songs are rather considered as a mix of sopranos+new age. Full of hymnos as well.

The songs
- Chowa~ Fuurai no Shirabe
- Haruka Naru Tabiji
- Kiseki
- Kaze to Rashinban
- Chowa~ Honoo no Kyoumei
- Uzumebi
- Replicare
- Umineko no Naku Koro ni~Rengo
- Chowa~ Utakata no Komoriuta
- Kuon no Umi
- Aoiro Kandzume
- Tsuisouka
- Chowa~ Daichi no Sanka
- Utau Oka~ Salavec rhaplanca
- Amnesia
- Chowa~ Harmonia
- Harmonia~ Mihatenu chi he

All in all I'd say that my nii-sama has never failed me in all these years. I truly hope someone as nice as him will get a good reward in his life. Although I might never meet him for the rest of my life, I want him to achieve the happiness worthy of his personality. Domo arigatou aniki! *bows*

Today feels a tad bit sweeter due to the songs and the haiku :)

I'm somehow blessed.



One of Akiko's song - Utau Oka~ Salavec rhaplanca

Sambal Fried Tempe with Potatoes ~ Simply Vegan!

Yesterday, I cooked two dishes for dinner, a dry hot one with a mild soupy one as to complement each other. The first dish is known as sambal tempe. What is 'sambal'? Sambal uses chilli paste as the base for cooking. Non-Malaysian would be scared to eat if they knew this *chuckles* Or is it truly too hot for those lads? I don't know myself. The truth is, we Malaysians uses a lil bit of magic to kill of the hotness and adjust it to the right taste for each of our own tongue.

Well, I know a lot of people knows how to make this, heck maybe everyone knows. But, to help out the beginners, and the low-budgets, I usually will explains everything from the making of the chillie paste (incase, you didn't have enough dough to buy the premade packet ones, or incase it cannot be found in ur vacinity, only fresh or dried chillies are available) to finding the right kind of 'tempeh' and significance of alternatives for replacements of items that is not available :)

Tell ya one thing, if you prepared the cooked chilli paste properly, it can be kept for at least 1-2weeks and to be used with different kinds of stuff like fish, chicken, crabs, shrimp etc.

Well, lets start;

Ingredients

- 4 tbs of chilli paste - chilli paste can be made from dried red chillies of fresh ones* (check the postscripts)
- 1 big onion
- 1 pkt of tempeh - cut into thin pieces (+-0.5cm) - thinner tempeh would make it crunchier when deep fried
- 1 medium sized potato - cut in wedges
- 1 pcs of asam gelugor/keping (can be replaced with tamarind juice)
- sugar
- salt
- water (2 cups)

Method

First things first, blend the onion with minimal water (if using dry blender is better) or you can use the conventional way, a good grace of mortar and pastle + sweat *laughing* Tell ya what? I've once used a laboratory's mortar and pastle used to extract mitochondria from leaves (an organelle within a single cell) to prepare ingredients for cooking crab :P Nobody knows and I'm still fine. So I supposed it not that bad huh XD

Use around 3-4 tbs of oil at medium fire and saute the onion until frangrant first before adding 4 tbs of chilli paste (this is to your choice, if you want to make more gravy, put more, if want it abit dry, you can put less). Keep on stirring. Don't stop since the heat can burn your chilli paste. When the mixture of oil with chilli paste started to separate themselves (you can see the oil comes to the surface in bubbles), quickly lower down the fire.

Add in 1 cup of water with 1 small piece of 'asam keping' and let it simmer for awhile. Below is an image of 'asam keping/asam gelugor'. An alternative for this is the tamarind juice. But this juice will only be added nearing the end of the cooking. I'll tell u when later.

During the meantime, immerse your potatoes in water for awhile to reduce the amount of white residues coming out of em. The white residues are starch. You see, potatoes are high in carbohydrate like rice, so you should reduce them if you wanna eat rice :)

Deep fry your 'tempe' using a different wok filled with 4 tbs of oil. Keep on stirring them once awhile. When they're nice and crispy, take em out and put on top of a paper towels for the extra oil to absorb em.

Then, fry yer potatoes until golden!

At this stage, when both ingredients are properly fried and put aside, check on your chilli paste (you should actually check them regularly on intervals and stir abit). If its rather dry, you can add in another 1/2-1 cup of water.

Add 5tbs of sugar, 1tsp of salt. Taste and adjust. If its not sour enough, put water and leave it for a while, let the 'asam gelugor' work its magic. If its not salty enough, just add salt. If the hotness still persists, add in sugar to neutralize it. Please don't add all 5 tbs sugar like I said in one go, what I mean is, put in abit and taste. It can never go wrong duh. Also, if you don't have asam gelugor and you wanna substitute with tamarind juice, this is the right time. Add less water if you wanna add tamarind juice inside.

Stir for a while. Add in the fried potatoes and tempeh. Close fire.

This is what a sambal tempe looks like. It does look hot and spicy, but believe me, its really not so..its delicious! And its totally vegan! For 4 persons :)

P/s; I'll explain a little about some facts on chilli paste, tempe asam gelugor etc for your reference.

(a) I've searched for the meaning of asam gelugor and found nothing. Maybe its a local ingredients. I can't even found the original fruit for this one. It is a piece of sun dried fruit. The original colour is yellow orangy. If for tamarind, easy2 :)

How to make a tamarind juice for cooking
- fresh tamarind - break the pod and take the fill within, put in some water and knead with your fingers (make sure not cuts on ur deinty fingers, coz it'll be oh so much pain since its acidic). The right final result would be to obtain a viscous brownish liquid, extremely sour. Use more tamarind if the liquid is not viscous enough. Then seive! Take the liquid only.
- tamarind in a ball form - take out like one handful and dilute with water. Do remember so seive the solution in order to separate all the impurities

How to make chilli paste for cooking
-fresh chillies - grab handful of fresh red chillies (no matter whats the number), cut to small parts (around 1-1 1/2 inch) and blend them with minimal water (make it around 1-2cups). YOu can remove the seeds if you want. Make sure its in paste form, if its not, add more chillies
-dried red chillies - cut the dried chillies to small pieces, boil them at medium heat until all the seeds come out and sink to the bottom. After the wrinkled dried chillies started to look like fresh chillies, close the fire and scoope out the surface using a ladle with small2 holes. You can also use a small seive. Blend with minimal water. Usually I use the whole bag of chillies and turn them to paste and keep in fridge. But remember this chilli paste won't last long if you didn't fry them first.

How to choose the right tempe/tempeh;
tempe usually comes in plastic packages or in banana leaves. The ones that you should pick must look reaally white w/o black residues on top. If its dark yellowish brown, NO. Coz yellowing means the tempe is old. The blackish thing might be fungal spores of Aspergillus niger (which means got cross contamination). Accumulation of this will lead to aspergillosis. If the texture is not firm, then oso NO. Btw, just so you know, tempeh is made from soya beans inoculated with a starter culture, the Rhizopus spp. So, its totally vegan, sorta like tofu :) You can check out the article at wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempeh Its really dem tasty! (if you cook it right tho XD)

Simple Vege Rice Porridge

Dem, sorry for the pics of the previous post. I don't feel like editing it. Too much work.

Well, getting to the main point;

Yesterday, my housemate cooked this for dinner because we didn't have enough rice to cook a decent meal *laughes* We only grab 2 handful of uncooked rice to make this porridge. And as well as some leftover veges in the fridge.

Ingredients;

2 bunch/handful of uncooked rice (consider 1 bunch/person)
lotsa lotsa water
veges (i use 1/2 carrots, 1/2 potatos, 1 pak choy (baby sawi)) - make em into cubes plz darlin..or juz cut to small pieces
5-6 slices of ginger (slice it thinly)
1/4 chicken/anchovy/vege cube (as the stock)
2 teaspoon of ground black pepper
1 teaspoon of corn flour*optional
glass vermicelli*optional

How to do it;

As easy as pie darlin' (easier thn pie actually);

put in 2 handful of uncooked rice into a big pot (at least around 20x15x20cm) make sure the pot is deep enough to be filled with 5 cups of water (the english cup you use to make coffee)

boil the uncooked rice with water at low heat for at least 1/2-1 hour. Please close the lid to make it cook faster.

when the rice didn't look like rice anymore (meaning nearly squashed haha), add in yer ginger. Stir..Add in carrots and potatos..leave it for around 15 minutes.

Poke-poke the potatos to make sure its soft before you put in your green vege (pak choy).

After you add in pak choy, you must quickly add in black pepper, salt, chicken cube and glass vermicelli. Stir abit and taste. If he taste is just right for you, you can add in the corn flour. Don't add all, juz a bit and stir. Make sure the broth thickens to your desired thickness then stop, if not it'll turn too gooey. You won't like it.

Yaataaa! Done! easy right? only took some time to make em. Remember not to use big fire coz it'll burn your porridge easily, better make it steady with a low fire and getting a really nice porridge.

You can deco yer stuff with fried shallot, some chillies and green onions. I only put in the fried shallot :)

Ready to serve for 2 persons!

There are actually many ways to make porridge. I'll give you some tips on how to reduce the time of cooking/making it taste better;

a) If you soak the uncooked rice with water 1/2 hour before you start cooking, your cooking will turn to porridge sooner (make sure to immerse the rice juz at the surface and put in 2-3 drops of sesame oil)

b) sesame oil makes the appetite of the consumer of your food bigger. put some in any/every soupy cooking you make if you like

c) the porridge will taste better if you made a broth first out of the meat you want to use before you put in your uncooked rice

d) if you plan to put some herbs in your porridge, it must goes in before the meat.

e) the flow of items to put into soupy/porridge base cooking
herbs>meat>rice>hard veges>flavours>soft veges(can alternate)

f) if you want to put shrimp/octopus (sotong? ^^;;), made sure its at the 'flavour' or 'soft veges' stage. If you put in too early, it'll become hard and tasteless. Made sure it is cooked under 2 minutes.