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There’s a lot of things that has happened politically especially about that guy Anuar who has won the by election at Permatang Pauh and wit that, changed the whole political scene in Malaysia. Finally the opposition has a bit more balls in the parliament and that is a good thing. The era of two third majority is over and everything seems to be on the right track. BN has to be real careful as to what their agenda is coz there’s no room for fuck ups and that is fer sure. I just cant wait to see what happen next. The show must go on.

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Back in the kitchen, things were as usual. We got pretty busy for the Midsummer Feast but everything went well. Chef Kevin Cape, our new Exec Chef for YTL did the menu and it was a good learning process for the boys in the kitchen. In addition there are guest chefs (Stephen Mercer, Bobby Chin, Chef Ismail etc.) that came in to promote the event and working with them has been an eye opener and also fun for everybody.

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So, now it is the Ramadan period and things are getting really slow at the restaurant. After lunch service, the boys started to prep dishes for breaking fast and here the creative juice started to flow. There are so many good local dishes that to eat them all in one sitting is kinda tough. I think that I may have to scrape that idea I had of losing weight during Ramadan. I’ll post some pictures pretty soon. Still hasnt dwnld da pictures in my phone and there’s a lot of dem.

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So, it came to no surprise when the Japanese capital was handed by Michelin; eight 3 star, twenty five 2 star and hundred and seventeen 1 star beating both Paris and London as the culinary Mecca of the world. Although there’s a lot of criticism on why they got too many stars, the truth is the Japanese like the French has always consider fine eating as a national obsession and the preparation of the perfect dish is seen as a natural extension of the national spirit of “monozukuri” – the “making of things”.

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The quality of the ingredients also plays an important role. Tokyo is home to the biggest fish market and the meat like Kobe beef, vegetables and fruits are some of the best in the world. Ok, there’re a bit expensive but it is totally worth it.

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So, to The Land Of The Rising Sun…CONGRATS!!

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from Reuters

from times on line

from Asia Sentinel

MSG is the sodium salt of the amino acid glutamic acid and a form of glutamate. It is sold as a fine white crystal substance, similar in appearance to salt or sugar. It does not have a distinct taste of its own, and how it adds flavor to other foods is not fully understood. Many scientists believe that MSG stimulates glutamate receptors in the tongue to augment meat-like flavors. Asians originally used a seaweed broth to obtain the flavor- enhancing effects of MSG, but today MSG is made by a fermenting process using starch, sugar beets, sugar cane, or molasses.

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Glutamate itself is in many living things: It is found naturally in our bodies and in protein-containing foods, such as cheese, milk, meat, peas, and mushrooms.

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Some glutamate is in foods in a “free” form. It is only in this free form that glutamate can enhance a food’s flavor. Part of the flavor-enhancing effect of tomatoes, certain cheeses, and fermented or hydrolyzed protein products (such as soy sauce) is due to the presence of free glutamate

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FASEB (Federation of American Society for Experimenting Biology) has completed a final report on MSG, over 350 pages long, and delivered it to FDA on July 31, 1995. While not a new study, the report offers a new safety assessment based on the most comprehensive existing evaluation to date of glutamate safety.

Among the report’s key findings:

-An unknown percentage of the population may react to MSG and develop MSG symptom complex, a condition characterized by one or more of the following symptoms:burning sensation in the back of the neck, forearms and chest numbness in the back of the neck, radiating to the arms and back tingling, warmth and weakness in the face, temples, upper back, neck and arms
-facial pressure or tightness
-chest pain
-headache
-nausea
-rapid heartbeat
-bronchospasm (difficulty breathing) in MSG-intolerant people with asthma
-drowsiness
-weakness.
-In otherwise healthy MSG-intolerant people, the MSG symptom complex tends to occur within one hour after eating 3 grams or more of MSG on an empty stomach or without other food. A typical serving of glutamate-treated food contains less than 0.5 grams of MSG. A reaction is most likely if the MSG is eaten in a large quantity or in a liquid, such as a clear soup.
-Severe, poorly controlled asthma may be a predisposing medical condition for MSG symptom complex.
-No evidence exists to suggest that dietary MSG or glutamate contributes to Alzheimer’s disease, Huntington’s chorea, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, AIDS dementia complex, or any other long-term or chronic diseases.
-No evidence exists to suggest that dietary MSG causes brain lesions or damages nerve cells in humans.
-The level of vitamin B6 in a person’s body plays a role in glutamate metabolism, and the possible impact of marginal B6 intake should be considered in future research.
-There is no scientific evidence that the levels of glutamate in hydrolyzed proteins causes adverse effects or that other manufactured glutamate has effects different from glutamate normally found in foods.

Food and Drug Administration Report

So far so good. I’m quite surprised..I mean there is no real threat except if it’s taken like A LOT! I’ve also did some checking on other websites and found out that most of them didn’t have anything bad to say about MSG. Is it because all the big food industries uses them and they are trying to make it sound harmless? But then again how could millions of Chinese who have been using MSG for decades never really had any complain of headache? Imagine millions of them queuing at the clinics after lunch. It’ll be nuts! Anyway, I found a really cool article written by Alex Renton from The Observer discussing just about that.

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In the port city of Yokohama, south of Tokyo, there is a museum devoted entirely to noodle soup. It may be Japan’s favourite foodie day out: one and a half million ramen fans visit the museum every year, and even on the wintry morning that I went the queue wound 50 yards down the street - young couples, mainly: cold, hungry and excited.Inside the Yokohama Ramen Museum and Amusement Park they meet exhibitions on the evolution of soup bowls and instant noodle packets - more fascinating than you’d think, but these are not the main event. That’s deep in the basement, where there’s an entire street, done up to look like a raucous 1950s Yokohama harbour-front. Every shop houses a different noodle restaurant, each a clone of one of the best noodle shops of Japan. It’s a culinary Madame Tussauds.

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The Japanese are sentimental about their noodle soup - it’s the working-class food that nourished the nation in the bleak days after World War Two. Ramen chefs are TV celebs, in a country that devotes more broadcast time to cookery than even we do. I asked the young pilgrims just what they valued above all in ramen. They sniffed the tangy air, Bisto-kid style: ‘The basis of the experience is the broth,’ was the consensus. In the great Japanese cod-Western Tampopo - the only movie to take noodle soup, sex and death with equal seriousness - a ramen guru announces that the key to Japan’s national dish is that ‘the soup must animate the noodles’.What does chiefly animate Japanese soups and broths is an amino acid called glutamate. In the best ramen shops it’s made naturally from boiling dried kombu seaweed; it can also come from dried shrimp or bonito flakes, or from fermented soy. More cheaply and easily, you get it from a tin, where it is stabilised with ordinary salt and is thus monosodium glutamate.

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This last fact is of little interest to the Japanese - like most Asians, they have no fear of MSG. And there lies one of the world’s great food scare conundrums. If MSG is bad for you - as Jeffrey Steingarten, the great American Vogue food writer once put it - why doesn’t everyone in China have a headache?

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To begin to answer this we must go back to Japan a century ago. Professor Kidunae Ikeda comes home from the physics faculty at the Tokyo Imperial University and sits down to eat a broth of vegetables and tofu prepared by his wife. It is - as usual - delicious. The professor, a mild, bespectacled biochemistry specialist, turns to Mrs Ikeda and asks - as spouses occasionally will - what is the secret of her wonderful soup. Mrs Ikeda points to the strips of dried seaweed she keeps in the store cupboard. This is kombu, a heavy kelp. Soak it in hot water and you get the essence of dashi, the stock base of the tangy broths and consommés the Japanese love.

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This is the professor’s ‘Eureka!’ moment. Mrs Ikeda’s kombu is to lead him to a discovery that will make his fortune and change the nature of 20th-century food. In time, it would bring about the world’s longest-lasting food scare, and as a result, kick-start the age of the rebel consumer. It was an important piece of seaweed.

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Professor Ikeda was one of many scientists at the turn of the century working on the biochemical mechanics which inform our perception of the world. By 1901 they had drawn a map of the tongue, showing, crudely, the whereabouts of the different nerve endings that identify the four accepted primary tastes, sweet, sour, bitter and salty.

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But Ikeda thought this matrix missed something. ‘There is,’ he said, ‘a taste which is common to asparagus, tomatoes, cheese and meat but which is not one of the four well-known tastes.’ He decided to call the fifth taste ‘umami‘ - a common Japanese word that is usually translated as ’savoury’ - or, with more magic, as ‘deliciousness’. By isolating umami, Ikeda - who had picked up some liberal notions while studying in Germany - hoped he might be able to improve the standard of living of Japan’s rural poor. And so he and his researchers began their quest to isolate deliciousness.

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By 1909 the work on kombu was complete. Ikeda made his great announcement in the august pages of the Journal of the Chemical Society of Tokyo. He had isolated, he wrote, a chemical with the molecular formula C5H9NO4. This and the substance’s other properties were exactly the same as those of glutamic acid, an amino acid produced by the human body and present in many foodstuffs. When the protein containing glutamic acid is broken down - by cooking, fermentation or ripening - it becomes glutamate.

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‘This study,’ concluded Professor Ikeda in triumph, ‘has discovered two facts: one is that the broth of seaweed contains glutamate and the other that glutamate causes the taste sensation “umami”.’

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The next step was to stabilise the chemical. This was easy: mixing it with ordinary salt and water made monosodium glutamate - a white crystal soluble in water and easy to store. By the time he published his paper, the professor had, wisely, already patented MSG. He began to market it as a table condiment called Aji-no-moto (’essence of taste’) that same year.

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It was an instant success, and when Kidunae Ikeda died in 1936 he was a rich man: he remains, as every Japanese schoolchild knows, one of Japan’s 10 greatest inventors. The food chemicals giant Ajinomoto Corp, now owned by General Foods, pumps out a third of the 1.5 million tons of monosodium glutamate we eat every year - from India to Indonesia ‘Ajinomoto’ means MSG.

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Ikeda’s original paper muses a little about MSG and why it should excite the taste buds so, without arriving at any convincing conclusion. Much more work has been done since. We now know that glutamate is present in almost every food stuff, and that the protein is so vital to our functioning that our own bodies produce 40 grams of it a day. Probably the most significant discovery in explaining human interest in umami is that human milk contains large amounts of glutamate (at about 10 times the levels present in cow’s milk). Babies have very basic taste buds: it’s believed that mother’s milk offers two taste enhancements - sugar (as lactose) and umami (as glutamate) in the hope that one or other will get the little blighters drinking. Which means mothers’ milk and a packet of cheese’n'onion crisps have rather more in common than you’d think.

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When you next grate parmesan cheese onto some dull spaghetti, what you will have done in essence is add a shed-load of glutamate to stimulate your tongue’s umami receptors, thus sending a message to the brain which signals (as one neuro-researcher puts it) ‘Joy and happiness!’ Supper is rescued - and your system has added some protein and fats to a meal that was all carbohydrate.

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Ripe cheese is full of glutamate, as are tomatoes. Parmesan, with 1200mg per 100 grams, is the substance with more free glutamate in it than any other natural foodstuff on the planet. Almost all foods have some naturally occurring glutamate in them but the ones with most are obvious: ripe tomatoes, cured meats, dried mushrooms, soy sauce, Bovril and of course Worcester sauce, nam pla (with 950mg per 100g) and the other fermented fish sauces of Asia.

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Your mate, Marmite, with 1750mg per 100g, has more glutamate in it than any other manufactured product on the planet - except a jar of Gourmet Powder straight from the Ajinomoto MSG factory. On the label, Marmite calls it ‘yeast extract’. Nowhere in all their literature does the word ‘glutamate’ appear. I asked Unilever why they were so shy about their spread’s key ingredient, and their PR told me that it was because it was ‘naturally occurring … the glutamate occurs naturally in the yeast’.

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As they put monosodium glutamate into production, Professor Ikeda and his commercial partners found that making stable glutamate from the traditional seaweed and salt was unnecessary. They developed a much simpler and cheaper process using fermented molasses or wheat - eventually manufacturers realised that almost any protein can be broken down to produce it.

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The product took off, immediately, and within a few years Ajinomoto (which was now the company’s name) was selling MSG across Asia. The breakthrough to America came in the aftermath of World War Two. Like pizza and vermouth, MSG was a taste American soldiers brought home with them. They weren’t aware that MSG was what they’d liked in Japan - but the US Army catering staff noticed that their men enjoyed the leftover ration packs of the demobilised Japanese Army much more than they did their own, and began to ask why.

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MSG arrived in America at a key moment. Mass production of processed food was booming. But canning, freezing and pre-cooking have a grave technical problem in common - loss of flavour. And MSG was a cheap and simple additive that made everything taste better. It went into tinned soups, salad dressings, processed meats, carbohydrate-based snacks, ice cream, bread, canned tuna, chewing gum, baby food and soft drinks. As the industry progressed, it was used in frozen, chilled and dehydrated ready meals. MSG is crucial in no-fat or low-fat food, where natural flavour is lost with the extraction of oils. It’s now found in cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, and dietary supplements.

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Ajinomoto Corp started manufacturing in the States in 1956 and in 1962 allied itself with Kellogg’s. MSG sells in the States in supermarkets, under the brand Ac’cent. In Britain you will have to visit a Chinese supermarket for a supply of pure Gourmet Powder, but MSG plays a role - often in secret - in products on almost every shelf of the supermarket.

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But MSG’s conquest of the planet hit a major bump in April 1968, when, in the New England Journal of Medicine, a Dr Ho Man Kwok wrote a chatty article, not specifically about MSG, whose knock-on effects were to panic the food industry. ‘I have experienced a strange syndrome whenever I have eaten out in a Chinese restaurant, especially one that served northern Chinese food. The syndrome, which usually begins 15 to 20 minutes after I have eaten the first dish, lasts for about two hours, without hangover effect. The most prominent symptoms are numbness at the back of the neck, gradually radiating to both arms and the back, general weakness and palpitations…’

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And so was born Chinese restaurant syndrome (CRS) and a medico-academic industry dedicated to the researching and publicising of the dangers of MSG - the foreign migrant contaminating American kitchens. Shortly after Dr Ho came Dr John Olney at Washington University, who in 1969 injected and force-fed newborn mice with huge doses of up to four grams/kg bodyweight of MSG. He reported that they suffered brain lesions and claimed that the MSG found in just one bowl of tinned soup would do the same to the brain of a two-year-old.

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Other scientists were testing MSG and finding no evidence of harm - in one 1970 study 11 humans ate up to 147 grams of the stuff every day for six weeks without any adverse reactions. At the University of Western Sydney the researchers concluded, tersely: ‘Chinese restaurant syndrome is an anecdote applied to a variety of postprandial illnesses; rigorous and realistic scientific evidence linking the syndrome to MSG could not be found.’

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Science has still not found a convincing explanation for CRS: indeed, some researchers suggest it may well be to do with the other things diners have imbibed there - peanuts, shellfish, large amounts of lager. Others say that fear of MSG is a form of mass psychosis - you suffer the symptoms you’ve been told to worry about.

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The fact is that, since the eighties, mainstream science has got bored of MSG. Some research continues; in 2002, for example, New Scientist got very excited over a report that MSG might damage your eyesight, after Japanese scientists announced that they had produced retinal thinning in baby rats fed with MSG. It turned out they were putting 20 grams of MSG in every 100g of rat food - an amazing amount, given that, in the UK, we adults consume about four grams of it each a week. (One project took people who were convinced their asthma was caused by MSG and fed them up to six grams of it a day, without ill-effects). However, at no time has any official body, governmental or academic, ever found it necessary to warn humans against consuming MSG.

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But popular opinion has travelled - spectacularly - in the opposite direction to science. By the early eighties, fuelled by books like Russell Blaylock’s Excitotoxins - The Taste That Kills, MSG’s name was utter mud. Google MSG today, and you’ll find it blamed for causing asthma attacks, migraines, hypertension and heart disease, dehydration, chest pains, depression, attention deficit disorder, anaphylactic shock, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases and a host of diverse allergies.

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Thus since 1968 the processed food industry has had its own nasty headache as a result of MSG. Hundreds of processed products would have to be withdrawn if amino-acid based flavour-enhancers could not be used. They would become, simply, tasteless. By the 1980s a third of all Americans believed it was actively harmful. Crisp-buying teenagers thought MSG made them stupid and spotty. Mothers read that MSG could put holes in their children’s brains.

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So the food industry employed its usual tactic in the face of consumer criticism: MSG was buried by giving it new names. The industry came up with a fabulous range of euphemisms for monosodium glutamate - the most cheeky of all is ‘natural flavourings’ (however, the industry did remove MSG from high-end baby foods).

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Nowadays the industry’s PR beats a big drum. ‘Natural, Tasty, Safe’ is the slogan. ‘Many people believe that monosodium glutamate is made from chemicals. Monosodium glutamate is a chemical in the same way that the water we drink and the oxygen we breathe are chemicals,’ explains an MSG website.

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MSG manufacturers are now pushing it as actively useful for health - a way to eat less salt - and they have pursued the celebrity route too. Heston Blumenthal, of the Fat Duck in Bray, is among the eminent chefs the industry has enlisted for promotion of the umami principle at conferences across the world - although he uses traditional sources like kombu.

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It’s not surprising that the MSG-makers are so busy on their product’s image, because MSG-phobia still shows no signs of subsiding. This despite the fact that every concerned public body that ever investigated it has given it a clean bill of health, including the EU, the United Nations food agencies (which in 1988 put MSG on the list of ’safest food additives’), and the British, Japanese and Australian governments.

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In fact, every government across the world that has a food licensing and testing system gives MSG - ‘at normal levels in the diet’ - the thumbs-up. The US Food and Drug Administration has three times, in 1958, 1991 and 1998, reviewed the evidence, tested the chemical and pronounced it ‘genuinely recognised as safe.

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However, there remains a body of respected nutritionists who are sure MSG causes problems - especially in children. And parents listen. Most doctors who offer guides to parents qualify their warnings about MSG - it may cause problems, it has been anecdotally linked with disorders. But public figures like the best-selling nutrition guru Patrick Holford are powerful advocates against MSG. He’s sure the science shows that MSG causes migraines and he is convinced of the dangers of the substance to children, particularly in the child-grabber snacks like Monster Munch and Cheesy Wotsits .

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‘I’m a practitioner and there’s no doubt that kids with behavioural problems react to MSG,’ he says. ‘I’ve given them the foods, and seen the different reactions. Glutamate is a brain stimulant in the way that it is given, because it enhances sensory perception in the sense that things taste much better - and some kids become very hyperactive.’

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Holford admits that he has not measured this hyperactivity, or tested MSG by itself on children - his statements are based on anecdotal comparison of the effects of plain crisps versus flavoured ones. But there is some justice in his complaint that in all the acres of research on MSG, ‘most is directed at the possible physiological effects, not the behavioural ones’.

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Eric Taylor, professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at King’s College in London, is among the leading British experts on food additives and children’s behaviour. He was a pioneer of ‘elimination tests’ that examined food additives and their effect on children - establishing, for one, that the colouring tartrazine did contribute to hyperactivity.

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Yet he does not think MSG is a culprit and he has never tested it. Why? ‘There are so many substances, and there’s not much funding. And, with MSG, there’s no reasonable physiological theorem to justify the research.’ The only investigation he has seen on children’s brains and MSG, conducted in the seventies, suggested that the substance might improve reading ability.

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Patrick Holford, like many of MSG’s foes, also talks of its possible addictive properties and he cannot explain why ‘natural’ glutamate, say in cheese or parma ham, should be any less addictive, or harmful, than glutamate that’s been industrially produced and stabilised with salt.

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The anti-additive movement (check out the excellent and informative www.truthinlabeling.org) admits that ‘natural’ and ‘industrially produced’ glutamate are chemically the same, and treated by the body similarly. So why doesn’t anyone ever complain of a headache or hyperactivity after a four cheese and tomato pizza (where there’s easily as much glutamate as in an MSG-enhanced chicken chow mein)?

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Their answer is that the industrial fermentation process introduces contaminants. This is possible, of course, but it ignores the fact that whole swaths of the planet - including East Asia, where I live - do not have any problem with MSG. Here in Thailand, the phong chu rot sits on the table with the fish sauce and the chilli powder where you would have the salt and pepper.

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MSG has had one unarguable effect on us - and it is a benign one. It has made consumers look at the small print. In turn this kick-started the organic food movement and other, more militant consumer power groups. 1968 was a good year for rebels, and the dawn of MSG-phobia coincides with the beginning of a great shift in middle-class consumers’ thinking - a withdrawal of our faith in the vast corporations that fed and medicated us. After 1968 we began to question them and their motives. Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace came next.

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It is now 37 years since Dr Ho Man Kwok named Chinese restaurant syndrome, and it’s plain that the case against MSG remains unproven. So either you conclude, as some will, that government, science and the mega-corporates of the food industry really are all in league with each other to poison us for profit. Or, like me, you make a different decision.

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Now, I have little faith in the food industry and I’m as suspicious of food additives as the next person - I spend many hours fighting the grim battle to keep them from my children’s mouths. But until new evidence emerges I am going to give MSG a conditional discharge. But would I have it in the kitchen? Well, I did. I bought a little bag of Ajinomoto from the corner shop on our Bangkok street and tried it, a gram (the tip of a teaspoon) at a time.

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By itself it tasted of almost nothing. So I beat up and fried two eggs, and tried one with MSG, one without. The MSG one had more egg flavour, and didn’t need any salting. I tried the crystals on my son’s leftover pieces of chicken breast (definitely more chickeny). I tried it in a peanut butter sandwich (nothing). On Weetabix with milk (interesting, sort of malty) and on Weetabix with milk and sugar (thought I was going to be sick).

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My friend Nic came round. He told me about a Japanese restaurant he’d been to that gave him headaches and a ‘weird tingling in the cheeks’ - until he told them to stop with the MSG. Then he was fine, he said. I nodded and I served him two tomato and chive salads; both were made using the very same ingredients but I told him one plate of tomatoes was ‘organic’, the other ‘factory-farmed’. The organic tomatoes were far better, we agreed. These, of course, were the tomatoes doused with mono sodium glutamate.

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Then we ate mascarpone, parma ham and tomato pizza. Nic felt fine. So did I. I had ingested, I reckoned, a good six grams of MSG over the day, and probably the same again in free glutamate from the food - the equivalent of eating two 250g jars of Marmite.

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I’ve thrown the Ajinomoto out now. It works, but it was embarrassing - a bit like having a packet of Bisto in the cupboard. There is no need to have MSG in the kitchen. If I want extra glutamate in my food I’ll use parmesan, or tomato purée, or soy sauce. Or like Mrs Ikeda, boil up some kelp.

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So you think you don’t eat MSG? Think again…

Some of the names MSG goes under

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monopotassium glutamate
glutavene
glutacyl
glutamic acid
autolyzed yeast extract
calcium caseinate
sodium caseinate
E621 (E620-625 are all glutamates)
Ajinomoto, Ac’cent
Gourmet Powder

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The following may also contain MSG natural flavours or seasonings
natural beef or chicken flavouring
hydrolyzed milk or plant protein
textured protein
seasonings
soy sauce
bouillon
broth
spices

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Free glutamate content of foods (mg per 100g) roquefort cheese 1280
parmesan cheese 1200
soy sauce 1090
walnuts 658
fresh tomato juice 260
grape juice 258
peas 200
mushrooms 180
broccoli 176
tomatoes 140
mushrooms 140
oysters 137
corn 130
potatoes 102
chicken 44
mackerel 36
beef 33
eggs 23
human milk 22

So, after digesting the article I found out that it is totally ok to use MSG, but of coz in moderation. MSG is actually a self-limiting ingredient. Once enuff has been added to a dish, mixing in greater quantities leads to loss of flavor rather than a further improvement. And don’t expect that a mediocre dish is gonna taste great just by adding MSG. You still have to know how to cook.

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The article also did mentioned one of my favorite Chef Heston Blumenthal from The Fat Duck who is among the eminent chefs in the industry who has enlisted for promotion of the umami principle at conferences across the world - although he uses traditional sources like kombu. We’ll check out what this umami principle is all about on the next blog.

Information Minister Datuk Seri Zainuddin Maidin says the detention of five leaders of the illegal Hindu Rights Action Force (Hindraf) is “what the people want”. “It is also the government’s determination to safeguard public order and national security. That’s what the people demand,” he added.

Memorandum by Damai Malaysia – an umbrella body comprising 395 non-governmental organisations – handed over to Badawi  a memorandum criticising the illegal street rallies. Who are dis NGOs? We have no idea but what we know are that there are all related to political parties and thus shouldnt be called NGOs. The news called dem the “silent majority” that has spoken. I just call dem BARISAN NATIONAL. More on dis.

Zainuddin said: “We are aware the government’s action would be criticized by western groups through their media. We are ready to counter whatever negative reports about Malaysia. “All divisions in my ministry have been told to explain the government’s use of the ISA to both local and foreign media. We have the facts and we will disseminate them.

Oh rite..the US got da patriot act. And wht facts are you cookin up now? Regarding “explaining the government’s use of ISA to foreign media” I would suggest that u wouldn’t do it coz u know what will happen when u start to lose control during those interviews.

“I challenge the western media to practice real democracy by publishing both sides of the story and not twist them to suit their own agenda.

In US they have debates between Candidates before the election and there are also talk shows like “Meet The Press” where different parties get together and debate about stuff. I’ll be suprised if we are ever to have one coz the leaders are afraid of one on one debate. They are only good at putting out their message when there are cutting ribbons somewhere.

Since achieving Independence (Merdeka), the western media has never supported us. Whatever policies, such as the New Economic Policy, have been portrayed negatively in their reports. But still, we are so successful today (economically),” he added.

I think the world supported Pak Lah whn he was elected PM. It’s just da stupid stuff tht they don’t support. And yes, the country is more successful economically now but not everyone are pleased by the way the government is handling their job.

Zainuddin said the government rejected the concept of democracy promoted by the West, with street demonstrations being part of the democratic process.

“We will never accept this. Have the countries with frequent street demonstrations managed to achieve the prosperity and stability that we enjoy? Most of these countries are mired in conflicts or chaos,” he stressed.

US, UK and Europe doesnt have the prosperity and stability that M’sian enjoy? Hehe..you’re a riot man!! And wht concept of democracy are we are we promoting? The kind where people are guilty until proven innocent? The kind where media is controlled? Not to mention the other mess. In US, there’s a lot of demonstrations when the US decided to attack Iraq. The important thing is that the government still let the people voiced out their opinions and if the government is solid they should not fear of being criticized.

“Today’s society is more educated and will not easily accept explanations without facts. Whether we are effective in disseminating information fast will determine how fast we can build a first-class mentality society,” he said.

Your’re right man, todays society are smarter and do not take ur BS at all. Where’s ur guts man? U are smart enuff to know what is right from wrong. Ur our minister that represent us to the world. And u think that u have a first class mentality? Just google ISA and see what the intelligent and educated people think about ISA and maybe, just maybe ur conscious will tell u tht it is NOT the right thing to do.

With all due respect Datuk Seri I have to disagree wit u!

“Our generation as heir to the great estate of human rights must learn to wipe every tear from every eye and raise every human to his or her full person hood. Our common humanity transcends the oceans and all national boundaries. It binds us together in a common cause against tyranny, to act together in defense of our humanity faith and religion. Let it never we ask of anyone of us what did we do when we knew that another was oppressed.”

Mohandas K Gandhi

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more on dis at Asia Sentinel

an article by Kim Quek @ Malaysian Today

Malik Imtiaz

Uthaya’s ISA message to Hindraf supporters

It’s gettin a bit busy now at Shook since everybody are preparing for ” Journey thru time” happening at Starhill. There are so many functions happening at the same time and its kinda suck coz most of them will be organize by shook. Since they are a lot of tenants thats gonna be participating on this event, the problem of getting them to confirm their cocktail menu is the biggest challenge. Not to mention the functions that we have to organize ourself. Most of the decisions came in on the last minute and no thots were given to the kitchen side at all where the real work are to be done. I think they thot that its like McD where you just have to unwrap, cook and serve. But no fear, coz we are so used to this BS already and i’m sure its gonna be smooth like butter.
Lots of bigshot in da watch dept will be there including people from Forbes who i’m sure have a nice and expensive watch demself. Anyway dis must be a big deal for TS Francis fer sure. Things HAS to be perfect and that is definitely what we’re gonna strive for. Some of da dishes by our “Asian Fusion” Chef Kevin Cape looks promising too and i hope we can make it work.

Wassup wit all these expensive watches anyway? I just don’t get it, but then again i don’t really make millions and definitely cant afford such luxury. Hey, it is a free country rite? What u wanna do wit your money is totally none of me bzness. I just think that there’s a lot of other ways to spend it.

Dr Francis on JTT 

And where is Sami da highwayman Vellu? Can’t wait to hear wht he’s gonna say bout all dis. I mean come on..the indian has been in da shiet for too long now and it seems like nobody really listen. There must be a reason for them demonstrating their ass out there and Mr. Vellu..ur time is out man. U’ve been up there for so long and nuttin being done to ur own race. WTF rite?

So the govrnmt decided to arrest the three leaders of hindraf before da big day under a sedition act. So predictable..and they don’t even have the original copy of the speech tht they deem seditious. Another WTF but dis is a normal thing. Big Brother showing his claws.

Me fren just called said 4 died after being hacked by the FRUs. WTF!!! Dis is gonna get  BIG! (ok..it was not true…see, people can start out lots of rumors like dis)

Watch the video fr Al Jazeera
Read bout da real deal from Jeff Ooi

and Malik Imtiaz

Mr Lawyer (buruk) Nasri is a true Mat Rempit. The way he acted in the parliament is enuff to show tht he is not cut to be a minister. But thn again this is the BADawi’s govrmnt, so of coz we gonna have a lot of people like him (check out da list below). The guy cant even speak English properly and probably doesn’t even kno wht da law is. Seems like he likes to make his OWN law sumtimes. Wht a d***head dis guy is. To him democracy only means tht the majority rules and thts it. To hell wit da opposition coz they r ALWAYS wrong and the ruling gorvnmt is always right. Is dis the type of people tht is supposed to be a leader for our country. A total embarrassment! At least be a gentleman..you don’t have to shout like an idiot to prove a point. I think there should be show in tv like “Meet the Press” in States where the different parties will get together over an issue and have a real debate for the people to see. Maybe thn da people got to see wht a f***up govrmnt they have.
List of 11 s-hold under BADawi

The real government should b da people and da people have the right to protest and giving the memorandum to the King. Even da King is not making any fuss about the protest. Why is Big brother got all gelisah?

We r now entering the internet era and u know u cant hide anything. The gomen controlled media is s**t! You cant see nuttin about the protest on the first page for sure. This is done purposely to blind the rakyat so that all they see is how well the country is doin (at least for some people). But not for long. We da people r not tht f***** stupid.

Lamb rack is one of the dish that you can always find in most fine dining or upscale type of restaurants. It is a pretty expensive cut because the loin is so tender and the fat around it is a must for fat lovers like me. Here my Senior CDP Ayob demonstrate on how to prep the lamb. At shook I served the rack o lamb crusted with pinenuts and it goes with a mushroom ragout, polenta cake and raisin balsamic syrup.

So far the best lamb that I’ve tried here has to be the one from Hillside, one of Australia’s most progressive processer of quality live stock. The meat is really tender and it doesnt have that heavy lamb smell. Plus it is halal and you can can get it from Classic Fine Food.