KindMeal.my - Your Tasty Journey Begins Here!

I believe that there is always some compassion towards animals within a person, regardless of his or her diet preference. Even though many of us eat meat, we will still squeak with excitement and get drown in cuteness when we see videos of adorable kids (kids here refer to young goats, hahaha) leaping around the lawn. We feel that we want to protect them, love them, but still it is so hard to change our diet to a fully cruelty-free ones because we were raised with the diet which our parents were raised with too. Sometimes I feel like a hypocrite, saying that I love animals, but doing the other thing, consuming animal products which contributes to the animals' suffering. Shutting our mind off away from animal welfare issues is easy, but when you can make a little change, will you do it?

Have not heard of KindMeal?

KindMeal.my might not be an animal-rescue organisation, but it is a platform run by PetFinder.my (if you didn't know about it yet, PetFinder is an organisation that facilitates pets adoption) to encourage meat-free dining among Malaysians. So far they have reached over four states and one federal territory: Selangor, Melaka, Perak, Penang and Kuala Lumpur.

The webpage of KindMeal.my. The first step you have to do is create an account, if you are really that lazy just like me, just sign up using your Facebook account and enjoy a wide variety of meal deals you can find there!

Girls' Day Out - Penang Hill

A painting-like scenery of Penang from the Penang Hill! #nofilter  It was kinda fogy in the morning and it got better in the afternoon. I am glad that you can still find greeneries among the cities. Photo credit goes to Xin Yi and Vikee.

A real semester break rest is the one with no laptop.   --- Xiwen, 2014

Ok I quoted my own saying, please don't judge, haha. After some putting in some serious determination, I made it to the second trip of this semester break with Vikee and Xin Yi (the first one was with my family to Taiping) to the Penang Hill! This was my second visit to Penang Hill for the past 21 years and I think it is one of the best places to go in Penang to escape the scorching hot sun. Well before you go, you should check out their official website and fell in love with it before falling in love with the actual place!

'Bukit Bendera' stands for 'Flag Hill' in Malay. When we mention Penang Hill in other languages such as Malay and Mandarin (not sure about Tamil and other languages), we don't call it Penang Hill. For Mandarin, with direct translation it is 'Raising Flag Hill', hahaha.

In The Air, Above The Ground

This is a leap, but it's an undesirable leap for 0.02 tonnes of carbon dioxide added to my carbon footprint (0.02 tonnes = 20 kg). Ok I am just kidding haha but the data is real which I calculated using this carbon footprint calculator. After almost 21 years of never have travelled through air, this was my first time taking off for a route of less than one hour from Penang to Subang Jaya on Malindo Airline, a small plane whose inside looks like a bus with propeller on both side. Well I have been travelling on train but I found that with a mere addition of RM 4 I can save up to 4 hours if I choose flight instead, how attractive does that sound?

We are forbidden to use handphone when departing or landing, so I missed out some beautiful landscapes of Jerejak Island surrounded by fish farms which look like patches on the sea. Some scenes are meant to be kept only in memories boohoo. This place is actually still the mainland of Penang where you can't even see the borderline between the sea and the sky.

Lots of plantations consisted of green patches of different shades. Thanks to the cloudless weather at Penang that I am able to see this beautiful view. You can notice rivers which are brown in colour as well which lead to the sea. Everything is crystal clear in the air that you can see things that you will not be able to see on ground.

Photoblog - Trip to Cameron Highlands with Family

It is the third week of my semester break (already??) and I just came back from a Cameron Highlands trip with my family last evening. Vacation is a really good rest for people like me because I survived without using the laptop for more than twenty four hours (hahaha such an achievement)! I would rate this trip as a nice one (despite the fact that I caught a cold as soon as I reached the destination) because it has been such a long time since I last went for a vacation and I decided to post a photoblog of Cameron Highlands.

Me with my bro's new pet, hahaha...

First stop: Restoran Foh San, Ipoh 

(When I was a child I went to Ipoh about twice per year to visit my grandparents in Gopeng. The journey there was always awful because I would get dizzy and vomit and very tired of doing nothing on the car. Now I realised that the journey to Ipoh on highway is just merely one hour plus plus. Why would I make it looking like a big deal ten years ago?)

Destination: Cameron Highlands

(The weather was colder than I expected. Too bad I am not really in a good shape that the first cold breeze caught me as soon as I left the car. So I was accompanied by a cold along the whole two-day trip. This photoblog should have been more creative and interesting and rich in information but I just couldn't do it in my current condition)

FLOWERS, one of the attractions on Cameron Highlands where flowers are displayed and sold to tourists (and they can hardly live or flower in much warmer climate  down here).

LEAFY PLANTS & CACTI, which are the safest plants to buy (with the greatest chance to survive, hahaha). Without the flowers they really thrive well out of Cameron Highlands except some species of colourful cacti which technically rot after some time. Cactus is really cheap there and those tiny ones are really cute! I fell in love with some of them and we ended up bringing home a dozen of them. We are really determined in bringing them up. Hope they enjoy their stay here, hehe (and live a little more longer).

VEGETABLES, everywhere. You can see white tents set up all over a large area of slopes or vegetables farms scattered all over Cameron Highlands (some claims to be hydroponic but I still saw that they use soils, did I misinterpret the meaning of hydroponic?)

STRAWBERRIES & GRAPES, children simply love these pink colour fruits. They are quite tasteless and expensive to me but they are really popular on Cameron Highlands that you can see many strawberry farms there. So far I have not tried to self-pick the fruits due to the price. For grapes, I only saw a little of them, others seemed wilted. Maybe it was not the season for grapes, yet?

(this was really expensive that I can't help to caption it!!!)

PITCHER PLANTS & FERN-LIKE PLANTS which cannot be found in warmer parts of Malaysia (I think this was the first time I noticed these tree-like ferns). Don't buy any pitcher plants there, they never survive the weather here.

TEA PLANTATION, which we often see on tv during the tea commercials. I love milk tea very much (no matter it's the English style, or teh tarik, or the one with gula Melaka, just not the taiwan style) but I was quite disappointed with my experience of having tea on two tea plantations there. The tea was tasteless and one of the plantations did not seem to be maintained well.

BEES. We did not visit the bee farms this time, just looked around in one of the small bee museums. The buzzing sound was really threatening to me, haha. It never fails to send shudder down my spine. However, bees do play an important role in pollination which contributes to our agriculture.

MOTHS, the unexpected visitors! I did not expect to see so many different species of moths in our apartment in this cold climate! ID please!

I was kinda excited at the beginning of the trip and took quite a lot of photos but the running nose was wearing me out and I kinda gave up at the end to just enjoy the trip. We didn't visit any farms which require entrance fees (they are not expensive though, an average of RM5 for adults) but still manage to enjoy this trip. I hope that next time when I visit Cameron Highlands again I have a stronger body that I can brave through the cold (freezing tap water!!!). The butterfly farm got my attention, hahaha... Well, although this trip was not a very pleasant one *sneeze*, at least I got some rest and now it's time to work!

A little extras:

Balcony of the apartment.

Good morning, Cameron! 

You can see hungry koi fish at most of the man made pond at tourism sites. Poor fishy...

A super big tree which looked like a huge marimo, hahahahahaha...