Festivity: Chinese New Year in Perth

 It is that time of the year again where I would have a reunion dinner with my family members. While the celebration did not have the Chinese New Year atmosphere, that familiar semblance of festivity is all around me.   The usual food, people and chatters.  Pretty much nothing was missing besides two more families.  But being in Perth, I’m grateful to even have a reunion dinner with both my family and my extended one hoho!  One funny thing I felt today is that I am the youngest among everyone @@! That rarely ever happens.  Maybe my cousins will get married and have kids soon HAhaha.

Today’s reunion dinner was at my uncle’s place!

The setup!

This was meant to be the adults table.  Until dinner, I was pretty much hiding inside the house listening to my cousins talk while I watch Malcom in the Middle.  Super multitasking.  Taking picture, watching comedy & listening to conversations xD!!  It was quite cold actually.  My cousin told me the beach was 300 metres away or something.  Or was it 3kms? hmmm

Family talk all over.  Inside outside backside !!

Uncle’s wife in action.  Cooking cooking cooking! Yummmss!

After watching Malcom in the Middle, there was a “kids” table laid out with additional bowls for that certain activity before dinner? Want to guess what that “activity” is?  I’ll give you a picture’s worth of time to think about it!

Flying table cloth lol.  My uncle’s place is super windy at time. Oh and I had no idea where that “picture’s worth” of time came up from.  But anyways, it’s the “loh sang” thingy that the Chinese do during most dinners during the Chinese New Year period which spans for a ridiculous 14 days.

Aunty’s super modern “loh sang”  With Salmon slices > than anything else, this is a “wow” factor for sashimi lovers.  DEFINITELY.  But I’m not the biggest fan out there.  I recall my first time having sashimi in Malaysia...  it was followed by horrible diarrhoea.

Plan view. xD!!

looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh –sang!

The Lee’s in their tossing action.  Longevity, wealth, errr kids>?, good education and everything else you would want.

Dinner spread and after that I got to lazy to take pictures of anything that came after!  Too busy feasting :)!!

Happy CNY everyone!  Hope everyone makes their wishes and at the same time pray for the wellbeing of others!!  Oh, do not forget to collect all those fat red packets!!  Good luck to all the house visitors in their collection :)!!

WenY

Bites: La Porchetta @ Fremantle

IT’s another Friday and the week has simply gone by just like that again.  The week has been quite good for me now that my parents are here.  They’ve been doing all the dinners and lunches for me! Mmmm Malaysian food.  But they just don’t seem to want to go out for a meal.  Only brought them for a meal of dim sum @ Golden Century and burgers @ Jus Burger.  Hope they liked it!  Other than that, we’ve been going grocery almost every single day @.@! They’ve been here for 6 days and we went grocery 5 times.

Other than that the guys and I went to Freo in the evening.  But before that we pretty much spent the whole afternoon in the city just walking around drinking and talking rubbish.  The cafe along Kings Street is really quite a pleasant place for a drink.  After that we adjourned to ENEX 100 for teatime.  Had sushi! Rwarrr!! Weather was being a bitch yesterday.  Kept feeling thirsty!

Oh and I drove to Freo yesterday lol. 

@ Car park.  Vil and Cr

We had our meal here.  La Porchetta.  The food here is simple and cheap.  No particle physics in taste or Michelangelo’s artistic food arrangement.  Simply good on the pocket, filling for the tummy.

Complementary rolls with butter.  Vil hates it ahah.  But o well. It’s free :)!

We’ve been here a few times, each time trying different pastas.  This time we decided to go for something not Marinara or Cream based so we opted for the more common Bolognese.

Definitely not your typical meaty bolognaise.  I’m actually quite confused.  Is bolognaise even supposed to be meaty or not?  I look back on my adolescence days where I would eat most of my bolognaise in a super meaty tomato paste.  Yummmm followed by a good licking to cleanup the sauce left on the plate! *Slurps*!  The bolognaise here is ok-ok only.  Definitely need lots of Parmesan to make it taste yummy.  Oh and Vil thought it tasted a bit sour-ish.  Probably because of a tomato overload!!

Fried Calamari with chips! A favourite of mine.  Especially the lightly fried ones in Bella Roma just up the street!  These were delicious too.  Or perhaps the calamari is just something that cannot go wrong? Tartar sauce with chips are yums too!!

Chicken Pizza!  This feels like the Hawaiian Pizza from Pizza Hut in Malaysia.  Just that in Malaysia, it is tomato based compared to the barbecue sauced one.  This chicken pizza tastes nothing like the ones I’ve eaten.  Felt somewhat weird ahah.  But it was decent. Just that I hate the pizza crust when it is dry.  Maybe pure Italian authenticity don’t go too well with me.  

After the dinner, we were all topped up.  Full tank but not satisfied I would say.  So naturally, the guys and I would go on and have a drink aahah.  Our choice of drink?  The over mentioned San Churros!

Classic Spanish.  Super thick, super chocolaty and super fattening.  But its ok.  Chocolates are cancer killers hoho!

After our drink of chocolate and nibbles of Spanish Churros we headed over to Hoyts to watch Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief.  It was a fast paced 2 hour action movie.  Found it quite nice but definitely not as good as the Road.  WTF reality movie.  Super nice.

WenY

Bites: Bintang Cafe @ Victoria Park

This little Indonesian diner located in a small square in Victoria Park along Albany highway just a kilometre or two from the Cannington side entrance has been one of my usual in my 3rd year.  Even then, it was until today that I decided to give it a modest thought.   No camera no thoughts, so yeah I definitely remembered to bring my trusty companion of 2 years with me!

From what I recall, they used to occupy two shop lots but today I see a different place altogether.  It seems like they’ve reduced their restaurant by at least half! Aikzz!  Next to it is some burger cafe called V burger.

Bintang revamped its interior but its nothing shout about really.  Still reeks of a bad odour from god knows what.  But fortunately, they have a few decent seats outside the cafe.  My staple diet here was the Nasi Goreng Special Extra Spicy.

Priced at $8.80 its a pretty cheap eat.  It has quite a fair bit of food that comes with the fried rice!

Looks pretty good doesn’t it ahah.  Most of the time, all would good except that I hated green peas as my tummy would feel hell weird after eating those peas(fresh peas fits my preference better).  Other times bad things that could happen includes not cooking the dish to order.  It wasn’t even spicy today :(! Being Malaysian, I feel its a let down when the food you expect to have some kick in it doesn’t have any at all. bahhhhh!  But overall it was still edible.  And you could add some chilli if you wanted to.  But in Malaysia the chilli would be “tumis-ed” before being fried with the rice and that makes a whole lot of difference.

Another thing my sister and I ordered today is the Kangkung Belacan:

Mmm this was yums.  Probably one of the better ones in town!!  But being kangkung, there isn’t always enough of the yummy leaf.  Always all those vegetable stalk only! Ackkk @,@!!

Overall Bintang is an “ok la” place to eat.  Nothing to shout about. Mediocre!!  And with it being Indo/Malay food, I’ve experienced countless of times where the food cooked always lacked consistency.  And this practically applies to all Indo/Malay food I eat.  Either I’m just out of luck or god knows what else.  And it seems like I’m not the only one with such comments out there. ahah Oh wait hmm Manise@ Northbridge is not like that ahaha.  Ok exception made.

Wen