Trip To Kelantan and Sarawak

After a very active months (January and February) updating my chess blog, i took a week "rest" from chess and went to Kelantan and Sarawak. Actually i'm not having a vacation there (unfortunately!) but i was attending job meetings.

12th-13th February 2008

Surfing chess news at Mc Donalds KLIA

As usual i brought my chess set just in case if i meet anybody who interested to play with me but unfortunately i was so busy and couldn't find time to play with anyone. However, i did surf for chess news while waiting for my flight at Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) but the free internet connection there was damn slow.

Unfortunately at the hotel i stayed in Renainsance Kota Bharu (photo left) , charge for internet usage in the guest room. So i just went through a few chess game "manually" just to keep in touch with chess.

Playing chess "manually" at my room

I spent two days and one night in Kota Bharu . After the meeting in Paser Puteh, my friends and i along with our Kelantan state officer went for a visit to the famaous Murtabak Raja house factory in Kota Bharu. Murtabak (photo right) , is an Indian Muslim (Mamak) dish commonly found in Malaysia. It is made from a thin dough filled with minced meat, usually mutton, and fried on a griddle until it turns golden brown. But the Murtabak Raja is different with a normal murtabak because the size and the cost is about 4 times bigger. It is a special deluxe version of murtabak to serve the Kelantan royalty back in the 1950s.

The special dish is a favourite of the Kelantan royalty and specially made for them. Now, it is available for both royals and commoners alike.The dish is made either with beef or chicken and is eaten with a sweet pickled onion.Because of the big size and the prise (RM 12.00 each !) , usually it can feed for 3 or 4 people.

At the Murtabak Raja house factory

The house factory also made other food like kuih akok, kuih jala and...

kuih "tahi itik" ( for non Malaysian- don't translate it to english!)

Actually before we went to the Murtabak Raja house factory, we have just having our lunch but we can't avoid the temptation to try the famous food, so here we are ( photo below) doing the best thing we know.

Trying to break Malaysian Records of eating Murtabak Raja by using just 3 people!

14th February 2008

In the next day - 14th February i was ask to attend a meeting in, Kuching, Sarawak. I doesn't have much time to do shopping and site visit because my schedule was very tight. Flight to Kuching at 10.00 a.m, meeting at 2.30 pm and flight back to KL at 8.00 pm- all in the same day!

I'm thinking of playing a blitz game with any Sarawakian player but due to time constraint- maybe next time. In my return flight to KL, i did spent a few minutes analysing Abdul Aziz game at Malay Open 2008 . Unfortunately in economic domestic flight, i'm not sure whether there's a internet connection in the flight but i'm glad that i can at least doing some chess analyse with my lap top.

Analysing Aziz Shukor interesting 26...Bxg3!? sacrifiece