Looking for a place to whet your palate? Want to savour the varieties of dishes that Kuching has to offer? How about picky friends and family members? If you say yes to any one or more or all three of these questions, then drop by Ohana, a kopitiam that serves a whole wide variety of food and dishes to serve up to your appetite. 

Ohana means family. Family means nobody gets left behind or forgotten. (lemme know in the comments if you get the reference) It's a family owned kopitiam or a coffee shop located nearby Giant Hypermarket Tabuan Jaya (map here). We had the great pleasure of meeting and chit-chatting with Christine, the owner, stealing her time every now and then as she dashes about other patrons besides us. She opened the business in December 2013, and named it Ohana for the representation of a family owned business. It also means that the food are well prepared, much like a mother cooking for her family (but please don't go calling Christine 'mother'. She might just come and find me with her wooden ladle and whack me in the head >.<) Jokes aside, here's what we had that day!

1. The Rice

Nasi Kari Banjir

Lalapan Ayam

Some of Ohana's daily specials are Nasi Kari Banjir - rice with steamed chicken and vege, flooded with curry (a little spicy), Nasi Ayam and my favourite, Lalapan. You can choose to have it either with chicken or fish, I'd personally go for fish. It is served with a lot of blanced veges (long beans, cabbage, pucuk ubi or casava,cucumber, tofu and tempeh) and sambal that makes up to 8 items on the place. Choose to have it with rice or on it's own - do specify it to the waiter/waitreses as by default it is served with rice.  

Will you just look at that sambal!
Don't it look delicious?

Why do I like the Lalapan? For the sambal, of course. You may disagree with me on this, but the fact remains - Ohana made their sambals to order - which means you get fresh sambal every time, and you get to specify how many chillies you want in it (dang it, I can actually taste it in my mouth.. it is ssooooooo goooooodddd!!). I'd recommend 3 chillies, 5 or more if you dare, and if you just can't stand the spicyness but wants to try it, half-a-chilly would do nicely. 

*please note that it takes me a helluva will power to just drop this post up to here in my drafts folder and drive to Ohana for lunch.*

2. The Mee/Noodles 

Mee Jawa Special

I have not had the pleasure of trying the other noodles offered on the menu such as Mee Kolok (a uniquely Sarawakian dish) but my second favourite dish in Ohana is the Mee Jawa Special. It is mee kuning or yellow noodle, blanched and served with thick, mildly spicy curry, slickes of fried tofu, meat slices and saté. What's so special about it? The saté, of course. It is juicy and tender and cooked in a very non-conventional way. How? Well, you'll have to visit Ohana and try it yourself. Haaaammaigaaaaddd I am drooling!! 

3 special saté

The flavours and condiments

3. The Westerns

No I don't mean people from the west.. I'm talking about food! Western food! Yeap - I'm talking 'bout chicken chop, lamb chop, chicken wings and pasta! This generally appeals to the younger adults and teens (ehem ehem, myself included) and my oh my are they delicious. We tried the Chicken Chop with fries and black pepper sauce - it was so tender and juicy and the sauce was just thick enough. 

Chicken Chop with fries and black pepper sauce

4. The side dishes 

Whenever I go out with friends or family, one of questions that we would ask each other is "Where to eat?". If you have this problem too, lemme know in the comments how or what is your most common answer. Like, one friend would want to eat something, another would suggest another thing, the other one is still full and just wants something light and another one would always be hungry (this is me, by the way >.<). 

Ohana has a variety of side dishes to try, from saté to half boiled eggs, tempe and sambal, to roti canai (the whole roti kosong, roti bawang, roti susu, roti telur and the lot) and toasts. Thick toasts, always served with half boiled eggs. 

Thick toast

The verdict?

Ohana is the place to go to if you have so many different palates to satisfy. It is open Mondays through Saturdays, closed on Sundays, 9 am to 6 pm. Remember, Ohana means family, and family means nobody gets left behind or forgotten. Thanks again Christine for having us!

Photos are courtesy of Garner (link) and Aliey (link)

Are you a casual blogger like me? Or are you making serious bucks out of your blog? If you're the later, please oh pretty please share some of your tips with me cuz I could use extra cash >.<

In any case, if you have a blog of your own, then you'd understand how gynormously huge a task writing a blog post can be! Add a deadline to it, then you're in for some serious slaving hours in front of the screen. 

No worries though! I have a thing or two to help you out with the bits and pieces of what makes a blog post great, regardless of the blogging platform you're on!

1. Storage, schedules and connectivity

Here's what most bloggers do when they're on a generic blogging platform i.e. Blogger and Wordpress - Draft a post, add a few photos here, another photo there, proofread, some final adjustments to the post layout, fonts etc. and hit "Publish". Yeap, your's truly is guilty as charged too. 

The thing is, a lot of us don't realise that the photos, and any multimedia content that were uploaded to the blog post, they take up space. With the use of DSLR camera, one photo can 'cost' anywhere between 5MB to 30MB. Add a video to that, you might be overlooking how much you're actually 'spending', in terms of capacity.. 

Wait what?! So you're saying that I'm 'paying' for the photos and videos? Yeap - although not yet. Even with your own domain and hosting, you are usually allocated a certain amount of storage capacity for your multimedia files. Let me introduce you to one nifty trick that I learned. It's called Google Drive. 

At this point, it is safe to assume that if you have Gmail, you have 15GB of storage space shared across your Gmail, Google Drive and Google Plus. If you inspect closely at Google Drive management screen, you'll notice under Google+ Photos - Photos bigger than 2048 x 2048 use your storage. Everything smaller is free. Yeap, that's right. This is the magic threshold that can save you a ton of headache in the future. Sadly, your videos will always take up a portion of the allocated space, but if you manage your photos right, you'll have more space for your videos - among other stuffs. 

This comes with the exception for photo bloggers who need to put up very high quality photos. But fret not! Another solution if you run out of space are cloud storage services i.e. Dropbox and Copy. Do check them out. They're also free - to a certain extent, of course. 

As for schedules and connectivity, if you're already on Gmail, do check out Google Calendar and Google+. They're both handy if you're blasting out your posts. One thing I have yet to figure out how is to simultaneously post to both Facebook and Google+. There seem to be no integration between these services yet - but correct me if I'm wrong (and please, do provide a step-by-step guide. Thanks)

2. Photo Editors and Manipulators

Remember what I told u about Google+ photo trick? Well, to execute it, you need some sort of photo editors. I highly recommend Photoshop if you have the cash, skills and patience. Wait what?! Patience? Yeah - editing a photo is a time consuming process, and probably the most wonderful yet dreadful experience in drafting a blog post. 5 to 10 photos are manageable with Phototshop, but what if you don't want to touch up the photos and just want to resize them so that they are free on Google+ photos? 

My tool - Image Resizer for Windows. Trust me when I say this tool has helped me tremendously. With as little as 4 clicks, you can resize one photo, or a whole folder of photos seamlessly! Best part - it does not replace the original photo (unless if you specify it to, but why would you want to do that?) You can then feel free to further edit the photo however you want to.  

Ok so you've resized your photo. There's still that daunting task of uploading it. Well fret no more fellow bloggers - Picasa is here to save the day! Simply sign in to your Picasa account using your Gmail, and you should be able to sync the photos (and folders) to Google+ Photos. From there you can change the permissions, and import it into your blog post. Easy peasy. 

3. Proofreading and post-publising
I am very particular with my writings - finishing every few sentence and then deleting the whole paragraph and restructuring them every so often so that I am able to get what I meant across in a manner and tone that I meant for it to be delivered. Honestly though, I can never tell if my tone of writing is delivered as I imagined it, because everyone has their own 'reading voice'. I do try my best though. 

In any case, I do want originality - and I do want my writings to be my own. Save for when I am citing or referring to another, then I may state my source and credit as necessary. Plagiarism is the last thing I wanna do, and so should you. Make your content your own. 

But how, you may ask? Try using Plagium. It will definitely ensure that your text is your own, or will tell you (and your possible readers too), otherwise. The first 25,000 characters - read characters not words is free, but if you're willing to fork out a few bucks, you can use the member benefits such as Deep Search and File Uploading. Why is it important? Well generally you won't need to submit your writing to a plagiarism checker, but say you're paraphrasing from another source, you might want want to do so. It's really your own call, but it's a nice to have option in my opinion. 

For post-publishing, I use a nifty tool called NetworkedBlogs. With a few simple setup steps, you can post your published blog post to Facebook and Twitter. Unfortunately, it does not put in the #tags to allow for more coverage. I can live with that - for now. Otherwise, I would actually go to my published posts and manually click on the share to social media buttons. Troublesome, but needs to be done. 

What if the title and URL is too long? Especially in cases of Twitter which only allows 140 (please correct me if I'm wrong) character limits per post? I think Twitter has it's own URL shortening feature and it is automatic (again, correct me if I'm wrong) but I personally use bit.ly to shorten my URL because it allows me to count how many clicks each of my URL has. 

So with these collection of blogging tools, you're off to a better and enhanced blogging experience. So go ahead and enjoy creating contents for your readers with half the worry and effort! Give me a shout out if you're already using the tools - any one or a few or all of them. Don't forget, if you have better tools other than listed above, do let me know in the comments. I'll definitely check it out!

Right.. ok.. *deep breath*.. Where should we begin this discussion? It is sickening indeed. What kind of Muslim would want to touch something as dirty as a dog? Both the dog and the pig are haram in the views of Muslims, and are to be avoided at all costs. The Quran is clear on this. The hadiths are clear on this. Mazhab Syafie'e is clear on this. The mufti is clear on this. Malaysia, as an Islamic country is clear on this - dogs and pigs are haram - to touch, to handle, to consume. 

Lemme just share with you how disgusting the event was and some of the views on the #IWantToTouchADog event. 

Translation : Does anyone know these so-called 'Muslimah' with their head scarves? They looked so proud when their mothers become dogs. What a devout Muslimah they are hugging and kissing their mom's who turned into dogs. Truly a dog's daughter.
p/s: Feel free to replace the words 'dogs' with 'bitches'. 

Disgusting photos taken during the event: 

*none of these photos are mine

**if you believe these photos are yours, lemme know in the comments or email so I can credit you.

This is what we, Muslims of Malaysia, were taught from young. Touching dogs and pigs is haram. Consuming any parts that comes from or has come into contact with dogs and pigs is haram. Using or wearing any materials that comes from or has come into contact with dogs or pigs is haram. Essentially, anything to do with dogs and pigs are haram - yes, that includes toys and plushes, no matter how cute or lifeless they are. Even saying the word 'pig' or in Malay 'babi' is taboo, except if used to humiliate another person. 

From this teaching and upbringing, watching how our parents and elders squirm at the sight of a mutt eyeing for food at hawker stalls, eventually throwing stones at the dirty creature to shoo it away. That's where we eventually learn to hate the dogs. Pigs, however, were saved from such a treatment because that are usually kept in farms out of the way of skins afraid of sinning. Dogs were thrown stones at, hit with a stick, yelled and shooed away because they are haram. This is just as bad as the next person tying a cat to a tree and turning the poor thing into a punching bag. Yet here in Malaysia, cat abuse causes an uproar, while dog abuse gets turned a blind eye. 

Perhaps this is the motivation of one, Syed Azmi Alhabshi to organise one short morning from 8 to 10 at Central Park, One Utama, Kuala Lumpur an event called "I Want to Touch a Dog" awareness campaign. As many as 800 people reportedly turned up for that event, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, from the inquisitive and curious to dedicated dog owners. The said event was organised through Facebook, and attendees were encouraged to wear colours to denote interest - yellow for want to pet a dog, orange for just to watch, and red for dog owners. 

Muslim's view of dogs
I am not writing to dispute the Muslim laws on dogs - be it touching, petting, keeping one as pet, keeping one as hunting animal, wearing it's fur and etc. I am not even going to post verses of the Quran's and hadiths of the matter. Reason being, as a Muslim, you may consult the ustaz and Muslim scholars of your choice on the different views on dogs and Muslim laws pertaining them. If you are not a Muslim but are curious to know, then do also consult a Muslim scholar. A first hand view and interactive discussion is more helpful on the matter compared to a blog post. 

I am here, as a Muslim, in my capacity as a blogger, to educate my readers that animal cruelty is animal cruelty - be it onto a cat, a dog, a deer or a mouse! Let it be known that although reports of animal cruelty rarely made it to the 8 pm prime time news, it is there. Cutting off limbs of an animal is cruelty, and so is throwing stones at an animal. Dogs are no exception. The Muslim's view on this is also clear. 

So what is the issue?
The organiser of the campain, Syed Azmi, said and I quote "This is just a baby step for us. I don't know whether people will now understand not to throw stones at dogs, but we want people to know that if they are not knowledgeable or are curious about things, they should just ask. If we ask nicely, people will respond," when asked regarding the campaign. 

Ustaz Mohd Iqbal Parjin, a Muslim religious teacher was also present give a talk on the touching of dogs in Islam. He said, "Dogs are also God's creatures. We need to overcome the mentality of seeing the animal as an offensive creature. Teach the young to love others but at the same time know the limit of touching one." 

Clearly, this is not a 'move' to confuse the faith of Malaysian Muslim community. It is not, as I understood, an attempt to disrupt peace and harmony among the Muslims and non-Muslims. It is not an irresponsible action that disregards the sensitivity of the Muslim community in Malaysia. It is not a subtle attempt to liberalise Islam in Malaysia. This is a classic case of Malaysian'd reading far too deep between the lines and too sensitive to an alternative way of raising awareness. 

It is an awareness campaign - one that aims to bridge a cultural gap that is so glaringly so but masked in ways that touching the issue is deemed racism. To me, as should to everyone, it stands on par with the leagues of HIV and AIDS awareness campaign, on par with dengue and aedes mosquito awareness campaign. It is an awareness campaign, aiming to teach everyone that the dog is not an offensive creature - haram as it may be to Muslims. 

At first, just like any other issues that involves religion especially here in Malaysia, I wanted to brush it off and choose to be ignorant. However, seeing the negative reaction of the general Muslim community towards the event, and dissing the organiser and the Muslims who attended as defying the God's law, viewing it as an insult to the Muslim scholars etc. Just because the organiser chose to organise the said event to promote love towards the creature makes him less of a Muslim than you and I? Does him, the organiser, choosing to do what he did, gave you the merit of condemning him? Is that a greenlight for you, as a Muslim, to curse him, to use crude and uncivilised words to tell him that what he did is wrong? Put that into perspective and see now if you're more of a Muslim than the next person, if that's where you're going with this issue. 

Put yourself in his shoes. Perhaps he is one with such compassion without much regards of race, religion and even transcends creatures. Perhaps one too many times he saw cruelty to dogs, be it being beaten or thrown stones at. Perhaps he has a non-Muslim friend who has a dog, and the rest of his Muslim friends refuses to visit this non-Muslim's friend's house because they are scared of the dog.  

Come closer to my hometown here in Sarawak, and our neighbouring country Sabah, and you will find a mix and myriad of races and religions in one single family. The mom and dad are Christian, two of their children converted to Muslims and married their respective Muslim spouse, the other son marries a Hindu girl, and the other daughter marries a Buddhist man. What if the Muslim children were brought up with the current mentality? If the grandparents has a dog, they will not be able to visit because they house a dirty creature. Is there no need to bridge this gap? Would the family be torn apart by default, and because of religion and beliefs that is supposed to promote love and understanding? 

I am not here to debate and dispute on who is more Muslim than whom. Just the fact that the Muslim community reacted negatively towards an awareness event says a lot about our mentality. Islam is said to never change - it is our mentality towards it and how we, as Muslims, present it, that needs to change and adapt to the rest of the world. The point here is, if you don't agree with something, suggest a different way of doing it. More importantly, be nice about it. 

I'd like to end my post with something a friend posted recently on Facebook regarding the issue - 

Translation: There are already so much problems that tear us apart. Add to that the program "I want to touch a dog" which to me brings more bad than good. I have nothing against dogs, but because of that program we argue, we humiliate each other. There is no benefit for us whether we choose to support or condemn the event. Other people has one eye on us. This happens far to often.

In summary, the cause does not justify the means. The organiser had good intention to promote educate the public that dogs are not an offensive creature even in the Muslim's point of view, only we are to limit our interaction with it. The approach, however, was responded with prejudice. Stop the blame. Just as you cannot change what I choose to say, I cannot change what you choose to say. Just leave them in the comments. I can, however, change how I feel about what you said, just as you can change how you feel about what I have said. Commenting is not necessary therefore, but still welcomed anyways. 

I honestly don't know what prompted it this time - maybe it was the possibility of meeting (according to my significant other) 95 business owners in a visitor's event for a certain prestigious world class business community (I  have no affiliate with them so I'll play it safe and not mention the name just yet). But as it turned out, I didn't even go to the event. I trust my significant other had a blast meeting new people. It's who she is and what she does best. Plus it's good for her current venture too. 

In any case, I updated me my blog layout. Going minimalist this time, I opted to hide all my widgets in the front page and keep them neat and tidy! Trust me, most of them are still there once you get to the posts, but let's agree to keep the homepage clean, alright? 

So, a little bit about the theme itself. Created by  ThemeXpose I tweeked a very minimal amout to my liking, mostly removing the gadgets that comes with the theme but I don't use. It is in my future plan to actually get my own domain name and then creating my own theme, but for now I am mostly happy with the result I have. But what's more important is that you, my dear readers, like them too! Let me know how you feel in the comments! 

Hey everyone.. It has been quite some time since my last post.. I've been a little too occupied with the real world that I neglected my online presence. So I've taken some time to myself, owing the chance to my parents who went away and leaving the whole house to myself (slumber party..??!!) 

Today, a little change of tone. I'd like to share my experience of being a blogger to my readers - you! Without whom I would not have the motivation to even write! So, near or far, next door neighbours, a phone call away or across the sea in another continent, thank you! 

I am, at the moment, unemployed. So when I meet new people (which I do almost on a weekly basis), if asked "where do you work" or "what do you do", I say I'm a blogger. Its interesting because a "blogger" is yet to be a socially accepted "professional career". Maybe not yet, but quite a number of us are building up our own presence in our own way to create and join in on opportunities to make a few bucks on the side!

Now when I say "quite a number of us", I do mean that there is in fact a society. The could be a number of societies out there that gather bloggers together, and locally in Sarawak, the society is aptly named Sarawak Bloggers Society. It was through this channel that I became friends with awesome likeminded people such as Cyril (read his blog here) and Dinah (her blog here), Garner (link), Lindy (link), Ophelia (link), Kak Tia (link), Aliey (link) Ana (link) and celebrity blogger Jian Goh (link) ~I'll have you know I took care of his bag in a certain world music festival once~ BWAAAHAHAHAHA!! Owh and lets not forget this awesome dude (whom I've personally never met but felt like I've known him all my life) Aliff (link).

So, what changes have I gone through as part of the blogger community, do you ask? Excitement! Adventure! Experience! Opportunities! I knew these words as just words before, but being part of a like-minded community brings forth a new perspective on them, and with that a different reaction and response! Although I may not blog about everything, but just the thought "owh this could be an interesting blog post" makes you wanna take whatever you're doing to just one step further! 

There may be periods of time (like..errr....between my last post and now..?) when I became silent, but trust me, the changes take place even then! And right now, I'm looking for even more opportunities! So if you happen to come across my blog and would like to take advantage of it to say... promote a product or your business, have an event you wanna promote or just have a new place to share with everyone, just hit me up! 

An open house is a tradition for Kuchinglites - be it to celebrate the Chinese New Year, Gawai Dayak, Eidulfitri, Eiduladha, Christmas or the New Year. Family and friends from different races and different religions come together to celebrate in harmony. This year, our family's open house for Eidulfitri was on the third day of Syawal. I'm happy to share with you some of the shots of the day. 

The guest sitting areas

The ornaments and decorations

The cakes and cookies

The buffet area

First guests Jean, Anthony, Kelvin and Min from Couchsurfers

Syazita and Awang Ehsan - schoolmates

Fellow Sarawak Bloggers Garner, Ana and Lindy

A mix of schoolmates and gym buddies - Deedat, Faizin
Zaidi, Sue and her sister and niece

High-school friends Mazriman, Syed Faqih (aka Suis) and
Zulkarnain (aka Didi)

As a norm of a host, I did miss a few groups but from the bottom of my heart, thank you everyone for coming and Happy Eidulfitri! Check out the story here or the full gallery after this jump!