If you own an iPhone and likes to customize your phone. But at the same time you just not willing to bite the bullet and go Android because you hate the stuttering experience on Android devices, there is a solution for you. Jailbreak.
Unlike old times where a wrong step in Jailbreaking will give you a very expensive Apple branded paperweight, Jailbreaking is perfectly safe nowadays.
I won't re-write the guide on how to jailbreak your phone cause a comprehensive guide is available @TaiG. Also follow people like @Saurik or @Modmyi to get really interesting stuff from jailbreak.
One thing to note. Similar to Android, a bit of precaution is needed and don't go adding un-trusted repo into Cydia. You know sh1t is about to go down once you see Russian popped up in your phone.
That aside, here's 10 reason why you should jailbreak your iPhone.
1) Apple UI is boring.
If you used Android before and loved how much customize-able the springboard is. Jailbreak removes that barrier. You can have you iPhone looks like your Mac or Windows 10 or even becomes Android Marshmallow itself. The tweak Winterboard and Springtomize allows you to turn your iPhone into this... plus lots more cool stuff.
Or if you missed Windows 95...
2) Spotlight is super damn annoying.
Don't you hate it when you're busy swiping your phone, and suddenly your thumb miss-cued and swiped down a little bit and spotlight pops up. Spotlight isn't exactly that helpful, although Apple kind of boost spotlight capability in iOS9. For me, No Spotlight gives me the cure.
3) Ads are even more annoying.
I understand people put ads on their app and webpages in order to gain a bit more revenue. But I don't remember my super mario bro 2 have ads popping up every 10 seconds. So sorry ads, adblocker is installed.
4) Keyboard Berserk
For those who used this, you'll never use the default apple keyboard ever again. Apple copied this into iOS9 but using 2 fingers kind of defeating the purpose. Swipe selection wins hands down.
5) Apple's notification banner is way too big.
Imagine you're playing a game and sudden;y a message comes in. And guess what, the default banner is too god-d@mn big that it cover a huge area of the already small iPhone screen. Tinybar fixes this. No more wasted screen space.
6) Know your iOS internals
Apple hides the file system from prying eyes. But having iFile, you'll be able to see iOS without clothes on. I can see power users drooling already.
7) Go easy on your eyes at night
If you know the blue light red light thing, and how it affect your brain and your sleep. Then you know using smart devices at night actually messes up your brain. But don't worry, there's a fix. It's called f.lux. It'll adapt the warmth and color of the screen with the time of the day so your brain will not be messed up seeing blue light e.g. the sun in the middle of the night.
8) Activate your phone
Want to look cool while using your phone? Want to minimize the usage of home and power button cause those 2 button broke really easily? Now you can use all kind of swipe, tap, pinch action to do lots of cool stuff e.g. hold the clock at the lock screen to capture an emergency selfie.
Activator allows you to customize your phone to do all these. Or to make your life easier, you can get Tage to quickly makes your phone multitasking a breeze.
9) Apple notification center sucks
Android notification center wins big time. To make your notification center as powerful as the one you get in Android, get IntelliscreenX.
10) Super powerful message app BiteSMS sets the standard that Apple can't keep up with the messaging app. Period.
Extra
There are plenty other jailbreak tweaks e.g. one that makes touch ID a lot more useful (I'm a sucker and still using iPhone 5, so no touch ID), a much more powerful air drop using AnyDrop, lots of camera tweak like having 4K or slomo recording on unsupported device, icaughtu that snap picture of the guy who stole your phone when he tried to unlock your phone or even LocalAPStore that allows your to get in app purchases for free.
Jailbreaking is indeed fun and you'll never realize that iOS can do so much more than what you're seeing everyday. And we all know that all the fancy features you get in newer iOS and Android are mostly copied from jailbreak tweaks.
For those interested, you can head to TaiG right now and give it a shot. However, it's strictly for iOS8 only. If you "accidentally" updated to iOS9, then you might want to wait a while for the new jailbreak to become available.
I got plenty of techie toys for these few months and not that much time posting interesting stuff online. Either enjoying those really good tech or kind of wrestling with those not so well made ones, I'll try to post some of these here.
Today, I'm going to talk about Android again. Android being an inferior mobile OS is a thing in the past. With Marshmallow just around the corner and recent iOS annoying stability, Android suddenly appears as a really good choice. But, yes there's still a but. Is an Android device worth buying?
When we talk Android devices, we're talking those that we can actually own. Not some Apple price range Android device (that's Rm 2000 and above). When someone spends over Rm 2k for an AOS device, they're as good as an Android cult or some anti-Apple-Jobs people.
For this topic, I'm going to take my own AOS tablet as example. No, not the Samsung tab that I won but the Dell Venue 8 7840 that I also won from wearing red underpants.
The Venue 8 is one of the best AOS device with Intel inside. Note: You can get even better ARM based tablet though. Here are some spec to accompany your popcorn.
Screen: 8.4 inch WQXGA (that's 2560 x 1600)
Processor: Intel Atom z2380 (that's quad core Anniedale)
RAM: 2GB LP-DDR3
Storage: 16GB + SD card expansion
Battery: 5900 mAh
Looks tasty right? Indeed it is. First of all, the build quality. This thing has an anodized aluminium body which feels a lot more premium compared to many expensive plastic-ky (ehem.. Samsung) devices. The device layout needs some time to get used to like the power button and the volume rocker located at the left side. The near bezel-less design means the device can only be held in certain very awkward way.
The good thing continues as this tab runs vanilla Android. You know how much I hate useless f**king sh*t like Touchwiz or HTC sense or whatever name OEM called for bloatware. But this tab has its fair share of bloats. But there seems to be no alternative to some nifty features without these bloats, so I have to stick onto some of them. More later.
It was all good until I realized OEM starts to cut corner on their products to be competitive on cost.
First, the RAM. It's only 2GB compared to rival tablets which have 3GB. That 1GB that is missing making multi-tasking experience a lot worse. Having 3 or 4 apps opened concurrently (I had FB chat head, a browser and 2 games opened), the whole AOS started to stutter. Switching between apps is a nightmare.
Next, the camera. OK, I am one of the people that against taking picture with your bulky tablet. Even that, the camera have to be at least a bit decent. But no, the camera on this tab is awful. The spec says 8MP with Intel RealSense. I don't really care about the megapixel really. But still...
Here's the picture I capture using the RealSense camera (best effort using single capture).
And the same one using my iphone (no effort needed).
Try to read Swiss Made and T25 on both picture.
The picture taken is always hazy. I tried every option on the camera app and none seems to be able to improve the picture quality. And it became even worse when I switch to depth mode. The glorious RealSense mode.
I never seen RealSense demo in real life other than Intel CEO putting his face on a computer screen to unlock the device. But the image captured using RealSense on this device is worse than cr@p.
Here's another picture of spray cans around my house.
And then I read real sense able to change the focus of a picture captured. Makes sense since it uses 3 camera. But the problem is the image quality is so bad that changing the focus of the picture doesn't appear to be attractive at all.
Then I hear the camera is able to do measurement as well. I tried, it's not accurate at all. And it doesn't work most of the time. Maybe it's useful if I capture something tall faraway. But right now, it's easier for me to grab a ruler and do it the old fashion way.
<Spray can picture with measurement placeholder>
To compound to the RealSense fail misery, the post processing of trying to get the depth information takes ages. If you think your camera's HDR is slow, you never played with RealSense depth camera yet. The post processing of these 2 spray is still going on since I took the picture 30 minutes ago.
Maybe it's the built in apps that is not working, but I tried scouring the Play store for alternatives but RealSense app is close to non existence.
There's a few more hiccups here and there like software updates are rare, and the 5.1 update only slows down the tablet even more without including patches for StageFright.
OK, if I talk any more faults about this tablet, Dell might do a product recall. But overall it's a solid tablet. Just too bad, the software (mr Android) is not polished to run with this discounted spec. But why? Benchmark numbers are fantastic. Shut up benchmark cause benchmark is just some random number and don't reflect real world scenarios.
So, is medium cost Android any good? Well, it depends on your usage. If you're using it for productivity like browsing web, take notes, chit chatting, then it suits your need. But when you start loading fancy games and do heavy multi-tasking, you'll start to feel the hardware is lagging behind.
Conclusion is, you get what you paid for. I'm kind of a power user so discounted RAM is definitely hurting me. And Android loves plenty of RAM. High end Android devices exist for a reason. So it's definitely worth it to pay Rm 3000 for a Samsung Galaxy S6 or a HTC One M9, if only you can fork out that much money.
In the end, buy something that you like cause you'll most likely be looking at it everyday. It won't be perfect, so deal with it.
Luck finally struck me again. And no I did not win the BMW X3 but I walked home 1 galaxy tab richer. Lots of gratitude to Ctibank's unlock BMW X3 contest.
First of all, I'm not exactly a tablet fan. Maybe because my first tablet, the Lenovo K2110 is a bit of a let down. But since it's free and I validate the hell out of that damn thing, I have little complain. My parents are happily using it now for their candy crushing madness.
But since I started to grow a bad habit of reading e-books and reading from my tinny tiny iphone screen won't do, this tab comes at the right time. So how would a far modern tablet fare against my old Z2460 powered tablet?
First and foremost, the outside. The finishing were good. Very Samsung like. Just think of a up-scaled Galaxy S5. But if you look closer, there are plenty of rough edges such as microphone holes, edges around micro USB slot etc. It can be ignored most of the time. But once you noticed it, it's quite obvious. The physical buttons are a bit flimsy. Not a solid click you get from Apple devices. Very Samsung like again. Overall, it still feels good in your hand.
Very light, weighing at 298g. It won't tired out you hands holding it for a prolonged period of time. 8.4 inch is just a right fit. Larger than regular 7 inch tablet means you'll get more screen area without the weight of a 10 inch tab. This one has a 2560 x 1600 resolution which is amazing. One noticeable thing, the screen is still bluish in shade. Just like all other galaxy lineups. All because of the PenTile matrix Saunsung is using across their products. Very Samsung like indeed.
Inside, this runs on Exynos quad 1.9GHz A15 + 1.3GHz quad A7 processor. 3GB RAM provides *good* mutitasking. 16GB internal storage with expandable micro SD slot. This thing has a 8MP world facing camera for a decent snap. I still feel my iphone 5 takes better picture though. You can get more detailed spec here.
The Tab S comes with 4.4.2 KK but 5.0.2 Lollipop is available for download. I went straight for the Lollipop update. For those who use Samsung phone before, you'll have no problem getting accustomed with the TouchWiz UI.
Although the TouchWiz provides some nifty features, it does suck up some of the performance especially during heavy multitasking where you jump from app to app. I did experience some 2-3 second hang time under heavy usage.
I won;t comment much on the CPU or GPU performance as I don't really do 3D intensive stuff. But from what I know, the Mali GPU is always a bit under-powered. But in exchange you get a power efficient GPU. Give and take.
Overall, this one is definitely a winner over my old K2110. Not only the spec went up by quite a huge margin, the weight comes down making it far easier to use.
C:\> Wintel
It's me again. If I got you readers excited with the new upcoming version of Windows, then it's good. Whenever Microsoft sells more Windows machine, Intel sell more processors. Face it... Intel don't sell more processors cause Krzanich says so. Intel sell more processors cause Nadella says so.
C:\> Win 10 is Coming
I installed the Technical preview (build 9926) almost a month ago. My initial reaction is not that impressed with the new Windows. In this short month, Microsoft has been constantly updating newer releases every now and then. If you got your copy and still wondering why you're not getting the latest and greatest releases, you're probably not on the fast ring.
Switch to the fast ring and you'll be leaving the 99xx branch into the much faster 100xx branch builds. Microsoft has lately made the 10074 build the Insider preview, kind of the latest stable build based on the fast ring.
C:\> Windows 10 Insider Preview
The insider preview is definitely more aesthetically pleasing compared to the technical preview. With some more tweaks and fixes over the previous 100xx releases.
One thing I forgot to mention on my previous review is that Microsoft did try to unite all Microsoft utilities into Windows 10. Much like Android when you sign in with your Google account, you'll get your contacts, calendar, Google drive etc all synced up. Here, you'll get the exact same treatment with personalized Edge browser, one drive, outlook etc. Provided if you sign in using your Microsoft account of course.
C:\> The Feel?
If you still remember, I install this on a 10 year old machine and the performance I dare not say it's good. Several updates later, the same feeling doesn't go away. The latest build still hogs the processor time. Although me putting more colgate on the thermal heat sink of my machine does help mitigate the heat problem, the fan still spins far too quickly. So I'm still limiting it to 50%.
So tips for buyers. Microsoft is saying if your PC can run windows 8.1 i.e. having 1 GHz processor, 1GB (x86) or 2GB (x64) of RAM, then you can run Windows 10. See here. They're bullshitting you. I have a limited to 1 GHz dual core processor and 2GB or RAM and it runs like shit.
Another tips for buyers. I think you'll need at least a Nehalem or newer processor for this. And who in the right mind still have only 2GB of RAM. Samsung Galaxy Note 4 already has 3GB of RAM mind you. So, buy new machine to enjoy Windows 10. Buy more... it'll be good for Intel.
C:\> More Testing
Forget about my old junky machine. I brought this to work and got Windows 10 on my work machine. I'm doing Windbg stuff so I'm not catching snake or anything.
Here's the spec of my work machine (give me some woah....!!!)
Processor: Core i7 4770K 3.5GHz
RAM: 16GB DDR3 1600
Storage: 480GB Intel SSD
Graphics: 780GTX
Host OS: Windows Server 2012 x64
OK, I don't put this on native hardware but on virtualized with hyper-v. So I bottled down the resources to match what I have on my Merom machine. Single core and 2GB of RAM. As a added bonus, I have a Windows 8 on the exact virtualized setup as control.
Sorry, screenshot is from build 10061.
I must admit, Windows 8 does perform beautifully even on a limited spec machine. But Microsoft screw it all up by giving it a 如花 like appearance. On the contrast, Windows 10 insider preview kind of crawling on the same setup. Maybe the final release will be more polished. But a significant user will consider upgrading their hardware in the anticipation of this. Good news for Intel.
The look is a lot better now with much cleaner interface and icons. I'm still not much of a fan of those modern UI apps but having live tiles (yet to work) on the redesigned start menu is definitely a win. One thing is I'm still surprised that 3rd party desktop app still doesn't design an icon fit to match the tiles despite all the time they have with Windows 8.x. You'll end up having an enlarged desktop icon pinned together with the live tiles. Looks silly. Blek!
My major complain right now is still the performance. Lots of apps, including the all new project spartan (still being called as such) does crash upon launching. Or they just launch too slowly like 10 to 15 seconds after I clicked it from the start menu.
The live tiles doesn't work for me on the insider preview. Maybe some secret potion is needed, I don't know. And the search bar takes too much space out of the taskbar so I minimized it to an icon (Yup, it's possible). Then again, the search box are way to slow to be anything useful. Cortana takes forever to load and the search result are just dismal.
And the legendary non responsive modern UI start menu still exist. You click the start menu, nothing happens. Clicked harder still nothing. Clicked rapidly and harder, still nothing. Not like it's new to me cause I've seen similar behavior in Windows 8.1 and server 2012 but it's just so damn annoying. If you don't have the my computer shortcut on your desktop, then the only way to navigate around is using the run box.
C:\> The Verdict Again
Windows 7 has been the winner for more than half a decade now. It's very easy to get around this OS and it's very user friendly and reliable. Just like your good old year 2000 Benz, good, expensive and reliable. But it doesn't have all the great features of a more modernized OS. Just like your old year 2000 Benz without those fancy touch screen head unit, DRL, paddle shifters etc. Windows 8.1 have all these goodies but it looked terrible, just like the 2014 Honda Civic.
Windows 10 will be a game changer. No doubt. The insider preview is a step up from the technical preview. Usability can still be improved (read my previous rant about the start menu). Performance is an area to improve. Right now it looks a bit like my K3. Looks gorgeous, feature packed but with sluggish handling, non responsive head unit and guzzling gasoline like mad.
C:\> Microsoft
This is a Microsoft Windows review. If you are using MacOS or Linux, and somehow hate Microsoft, do read my other posts which are equally interesting. But if you're curious, then do continue.
Microsoft Windows. The OS that most of the people is using or at least once using before.
We all know the infamous Microsoft Windows trend of good-bad releases over the years. And up until Windows 8, the trend continues to hold true.
Up until today, even the EOL Windows XP is more popular than the all new Windows 8.1 with update plus Windows 8 combined. As of March 2015, Windows 7 holds majority market share with 58.04%, Windows XP comes second with 16.94%, Windows 8.1, 10.55% and Windows 8 at 3.52%.
Thus, Windows 10 should be a good OS. Or is it? And will it be?
C:\> Windows 10
Microsoft has been actively pushing out their preview to Windows 10 to developers and early adopters. I, admittedly also being rejecting the completely unusable Windows 8 and is being curious what's the remedy in plan that Microsoft put in order to revive their dying OS.
However, there's a problem. I don't have a modern enough machine to install this on. I'm damn sure I don't want to mess up my Yorkfield gaming machine. So I ended up taking out my 10 year old Merom dual core laptop as the test platform.
Here's some spec of the Merom machine.
Proc: Intel Merom Dual Core 2.16GHz
RAM: 2GB DDR2
Storage: SATA 100GB HDD
Graphics: Nvidia GeForce Go 7600
This thing has Windows Vista Basic installed on it and the performance is just crawling because Vista being Vista. Not friendly at all on even on a considerably good hardware during its time.
Although the Conroe Woodcrest Merom family of processor are once the game changer in CPU, that was 10 years ago. Back then, 290 million transistors are considered godlike. But it's nothing compared to today's Haswell having 1.4 BILLION transistors. Moore's law my friends.
C:\> Installing Windows
And so I started installing....
The installation completed in just under 10 minutes. Windows XP takes 26 minutes to install on the same machine. The time it takes to install exceed my expectation as Windows 8 takes the same amount of time to install on a Haswell machine. This is a 10 year old hardware mind you.
However I ran straight into problem. The laptop I'm installing Windows 10 on keeps shutting down on it's own. Start install, reboot once, boom, shut down. I repeated a few more times and same result. I was like, "it's time to retire this piece of hardware".
OK, debugging tips. If something wrong with your PC, reboot. If reboot doesn't solve the problem, leave it overnight and all is well on tomorrow morning.
But I'm an engineer and things doesn't magically happens. And I found out the random shutdown is due to thermal trip. Then I thought, Windows 10 must be more resource hungry than Vista. Not a good sign. I had at least 20 trips until the installation finally completes (with the help of switching on the aircond). Kind of self explanatory as Windows ran the hardware at maximum performance during installation and during initial setup. And a 10 year old machine is no longer capable handling that level of stress.
C:\> Construction Complete
And finally, the desktop. Definitely a breath of fresh air seeing the familiar yet different desktop. However, the problem hasn't ended. The laptop's cooling fan is still humming loudly, the whole desktop experience is as choppy as f**k. Then I thought again, maybe these hardware is really not capable of supporting Windows 10 after all.
The overheating problem is never ending. Bam! Shutdown! Bam! Shutdown! Barely lasting 5 minutes. Then I thought again maybe I'll need to put more toothpaste to dissipate the heat more cleanly. But that involves dissecting the laptop and I'm not too keen to do that. So a quick fix, changing the power scheme. I limit the CPU to 50% and immediately it yield results. The system stabilized and no longer thermal tripping. So instead of having 2.16GHz at my disposal, I am limited to 1GHz of processor speed.
So how does Windows 10 performs on a 1GHz dual core machine with 2GB of RAM? I'm expecting it to be horrible with crashes here and there, while hungrily devour system resources. But no. It looked liked a real deal. I haven't seen any random crashes. There's no noticeable UI lag although it does get a lot more sluggish as more applications being launched (including memory hungry Chrome browser). All of these are down to outdated hardware. I believe Windows 10 will run like a charm on modern hardware.
OK, time to lurk around.
C:\> Start Menu
Microsoft promised the return of a proper Start menu. Just 5 minutes into usage, I'm not impressed. The new start menu reminded me of something. That right. The modern UI. So instead of being forced to full screen, now the modern UI only takes a partial of your screen. You can still maximize it to look exactly like Windows 8.
It looks nothing like the Windows 7 start menu that we used to know. There's no link to user folder. There's no link to my computer. Although you can pin these to the start menu, it provide no additional function e.g. going to computer management, system advanced settings etc other than a link to those folders. Exactly like Windows 8. And there's no way I can pin control panel to the new start menu while the old one is just there.
Maybe Microsoft themselves doesn't realize why the start menu is so important. It's the portion highlighted in red which makes a start menu so powerful in Windows XP and Windows 7. Not some shortcut to apps which the current Windows 10 start menu trying to get.
So is start menu back? I would say no. It is just a resizeable Modern UI.
C:\> Modern Apps
Modern apps integration into Windows 10 has improved. Mainly due to the capability of running these apps in window mode. Less annoying too. And makes multitasking a lot easier. The days of moving mouse to screen edges and doing funny mouse movement to navigate between full screen apps are over. I understand that pain, especially you having multiple monitors and have to point to a "corner"in the middle of nowhere.
However there's still a problem. There's still modern apps and default desktop apps that again, doing the exact same thing. For example, windows default you to open a JPEG file with it's modern photo app. The problem is very clear. Opening an "app" takes a bit of time. And there's a desktop photo viewer that opens JPEG images instantly. So the performance of modern apps vs traditional desktop application is still miles apart. Maybe there's a lot more animation needed in order to open a modern app. I don't know. But it makes your whole PC experience, a bit slower. Bummer.
Duplicated applications is still a problem. Like the example I gave above on the photo viewer vs photo app. The modern UI settings app is again as pointless as it was in Windows 8 compared to the legacy control panel which does thing a lot better. And a lot more knobs for you to turn as well.
And there's a bunch more modern apps pre-installed that you probably never going to use. Food & drink.. Money... Sounds familiar. Exactly. It's bloatware.
So with modern apps, the sense of getting what you want in an instant is not there. If you strongly believe modern app is the way to go, try do Ctrl+R and type calc in Windows 10. And compare it to Windows 7. Enough said.
C:\> Other Desktop Improvements
The desktop mode again really does feel like desktop again. Touch oriented stuff like charm bar, edge of screen actions are removed all together from desktop. So there's no more doing finger gestures using mouse pointer, something that dumb Windows 8 forces users to do. And finally windows OS will have multiple desktop feature. Something that Linux and Mac users already had for years.
Windows 10 also includes a new notification center. Something that Mac OS did to integrate Mac OS with iOS, and Android with Chrome OS. So now a seamless experience across all Windows 10 enabled device, something which is totally lacking now with Windows 8 and Windows Mobile.
C:\> Tablet Mode
So what happens to all the touch oriented gimmick Microsoft introduced in Windows 8? Don't worry. It is still there. It's just that now Windows 10 clearly distinguish between tablet mode and desktop mode. They call it the continuum mode.
Windows 10 hides all the touch oriented features away while in desktop mode. And if you have a detachable or a 2-in-1, the familiar Windows 8 experience can still be achieved when you switch to tablet mode. C:\> So is Windows 10 a win?
Windows 10 is definitely a win if you own a device with Windows 8. Doesn't matter if it's an Ultrabook, a detachable, a surface pro or even 2-in-1's. Windows 10 will definitely provide a better experience compared to Windows 8. I still can't see the improvement on Windows 10 that makes it a better desktop OS than Windows 7. If you're doing productivity work with Windows 7, you might find yourself again reluctant to switch to Windows 10, just like Windows 8 case.
I would say Windows 10 is a windows 8 trying to grow up. Instead of being in the blue corner to challenge Windows 7 for the OS title. Windows 8 will die off when Windows 10 is released (just like Windows Vista did when Windows 7 is released) but Windows 7 will most likely continue to live on and dominate the OS market until it EOL in 2020 (just like Windows XP today).
Unless Microsoft makes the desktop experience on Windows 10 on par or even better than Windows 7, the trend of good OS-bad OS will end with 2 successive failure for Microsoft. Then, Microsoft might as well just call this windows release Windows 8.2 instead.
And on that bombshell, that's my review. Thank you for reading.
C:\> Oh?
Somehow, I got my hands on this. Sibu Instant Kampua Noodles. So is it any good? Read on to find out.
C:\> Instant Local Delicacy Craze
It all started when MyKuali came out with the instant Penang White Curry Noodles. This thing sells like Apple selling iPhone. People all over the country went crazy hunting one of these noodle packets down. Soon, others like maggi, ibumie, uncle sun, kim curry etc started to follow.
But.... let's just say, none of these are actually very good.
C:\> Instant Local Delicacy with Different Approach
Lately when I returned to Kuching for the new year break, I saw supermarkets are flooded with Instant Kuching Kolo mee and instant Sibu Kampua mee. Following a not so good experience with the sub-standard recreation of the Penang curry mee, I at first didn't give much damn about the instant kampua noodles.
But maybe I've been away from this corner shop cafe (Hiek Lik Cafe. A freaking must stop place for a good bowl of Kampua noodles if you happened to stop by at Sarikei) for far too long. So I decided to take a shot.
The packaging for the instant kampua noodles is simple. No fancy colorful package. Just a see through package. Simplicity is one thing. But I think the main selling point of this is the noodles itself. One packet consist of one serving of dried kampua noodles, a packet of soy sauce and a packet of vegetable oil, lard and shallots.
Pictured is my 10 inch plate with the packet ingredients.
C:\> Time to Recreate the Glorious Kampua Mee
Cooking is very easy, just add hot water and boil for 3 minutes. Then drain the water off until dry and mix well with the seasoning. Sound familiar? Exact step on how you make maggi mee goreng.
C:\> The Verdict
Here's the outcome. A good plate of kampua noodles. The noodles itself is a spot on. As good as what you'll get around the streets of Sibu or Sarikei.
However, there's a few problem....
First, there's not enough umph in the seasoning. The lard did much of the fragrance out of the noodles. But, I grew up at the stronger taste part of town. But luckily, there's a quick fix by adding some extra chili and soy sauce. With the extra soy sauce, the kampua noodles have a much livelier color, and looks much more delicious. Like what foochow people always ordered - kampua-dou-yiu-lak.
C:\> There's More!
However, a plate of kampua will not be considered perfect without slices of char siew and minced pork. But I can't really find those ingredient in a short time so... time to compromise. Char siew and siew bak.. on top of this glorious noodles.
C:\> The Summary
The noodles itself is already a good recreation of the original kampua noodles. But that is all you need. The rest, is up to your creativity to decorate the noodles. For me, it's some extra chili and soy sauce plus a generous serving of char siew and siew bak.
C:\> What's Next?
A good plate of kampua noodles has get my engine going. So next time, I should experiment with other instant recreation of Sarawak authentic delicacies.
