bfm interviews judy cheng-hopkins

i blogged about bfm 2 years ago. it is by far, the BEST radio station in malaysia, if not in this region!

a common misconception is that it only talks about business, stock market etc. far from it! there's also talks on culture, on people, interviews with doctors, as well as ceos, business owners etc.

[you know, the best way to access a person's mind is to speak to him/her personally. observe how he/she answers, the thought process behind it and also the body language. all these tell a lot more than some press cuttings or some journalist's summation. now, on the radio, we can't study the body language but we could still pay attention to the tone, and pay more attention to the wordings and the content. often times, this is more than sufficient to read a person.

this is why it's great to listen to interviews. you learn more "in between the words", rather like reading between the lines.]

anyway, i'm digressing! this morning, listened to this interview of a fascinating malaysian woman. fascinating as she is really doing something that has a profound impact on society. you must have heard of folks going into politics to help out the needy? well, here's one lady who's doing it and not via political means.

she is none other than united nations assistant secretary general for peace building support judy cheng-hopkins. here is some info about her.

on the interview, she talks about her role in helping to rebuild a country after war. hey, after years of fighting, sooner or later, people will get tired of fighting and will lay down arms. so this is where he group steps in to help them get back on track for life to go on.

here's the podcast.



by the way, did i mention she's also the first malaysian listed by forbes as among the 10 most powerful women in united nations? 

so next time you listen to the radio, why not listen to bfm rather than some juvenile station?  great content, great music!

Make you own food dehydrator and biltong!

I was browsing ikeahacker (http://ikeahacker.blogspot.com) when I came across a post about making your own biltong.

wait. ikea hacker? yup, it's a site where folks submit their ikea hacks, basically hacking their ikea furniture to something else! the site is run by jules, a Malaysian who was once interviewed on bfm. way to go girl!

biltong? it's like beef jerky but thicker and supposedly tastes better. a favourite among South Africans and carnivores.

and biltong is made simply by drying marinated meat. well, wanted to make some treats for tonto and this is just the ticker! meat snack treats are very expensive, around rm20 for a 150g pack. so why not make your own?

first you need to make a biltong box. various schemes are available on the net and I hacked my own version using some thrown away planks I found in the neighbourhood during my daily walks with tonto.

built a very crude looking box, held together via furniture bracket and screws, the construction shouldn't take more than an hour, using only hand tools. chopsticks are placed at the top to hold good old paper clips (use the bigger sized ones) which hangs the meat strips.

near the base of the box, fit a light bulb socket (I use E27 type here) and the necessary wiring to light it up. I considered a dimmer as well as a timer but opted out for a "very quick" hack.

the biggest trouble I had was sourcing for a thermometer. dang! the easily available ones are all body thermometers, good to only 42c but we need good heat in the range of 60 to 70c. I finally found a few good ones at an instrument specialist store for rm75. I later found i could get the same thing from another store for half the price! @#%#!!

anyway using a 60w light bulb, I could only get around 50c so this isn't sufficient. a 100w bulb is perfect as I got 60 to 70c with it. now don't use energy saving bulbs here as we want the heat here. you can put on your green cap later.

last item to get is beef. bought half kg of Indian beef sliced thinly of course. you know our Hindu brothers don't consume beef hence cows live to an old age in India. the old cows are then slaughtered and the frozen meat imported here. these are about half the price of local beef. now you understand why your local nasi kandar stall sells beef curry cheaper than chicken curry?

as this experimental jerky is meant for tonto, we forego marinating the meat and only washed it with a little vinegar. the vinegar will darken the meat as well as soften the sinews inside. you need to soak in vinegar for a few hours as this is an old cow!

and about 8 hours later... we have jerky!

tonto absolutely loves it! the aroma got him running around in circles. he followed me wherever I went, well until I put the jerky away.

the pictures explain the rest.

wholemeal bread

i always pride myself that i'm baking 100% wholemeal bread, and not that wholemeal flour mixed with white flour nonsense you see people peddling and passing it off as wholemeal bread.

you see, baking wholemeal bread is quite challenging. it's so wet you need different way of handling it. and there aren't that many wholemeal recipes out there. i can't even think of any bakery doing wholemeal bread the purist way.

until one day....

i was late to work as just collected my old car (from the best car air con man in kuala lumpur!) and was rushing to work when i caught "open for business" on bfm.my, the thinking man's radio station. this episode features madam june lim, "spreading the message of a macrobiotics diet". click on the link for the podcast.

[i wish other radio stations would feature more intelligent and useful shows rather than those "what would you do if zombies rule the world" nonsense.]

and madam lim mentioned about her bakery employing slow fermentation whole wheat flour... hey! that got me interested!

a day later, went to their outlet, woods macrobiotics, in bangsar and managed to try out their 100% wholemeal flour bread.

hmm... not bad. i like it!

they use 100% organic wholemeal flour and sourdough fermentation. great!

now i'm tempted to have another go at sourdough again. previous attempts yielded "funny" results. a friend, mark, tried and asked, "did you put banana in it? it tastes like banana.". my sourdough attempt results in banana flavoured bread!

89.9... The Business Station

 

when i was studying in the states, my tuner was only tuned to 94.9, the classic rock station! it was a blast! i had it playing almost all the time, and it introduced me to lots of rock dinosaurs!

but back home in malaysia, i'd rather listen to chinese than english radio stations. they are just so bad, so juvenile, so silly... it seems that the people behind the radio stations only cater to youths. it's all just today's hits, silly boybands, hopeless singers doing inept cover versions, and silly deejays! i really think many of these stations hire radio deejays from some circus. they are THAT bad!

so i was pleasantly surprised when i first listened to bfm 89.9, the business station.okay, call me jaded but the music selection from these folks is soooo refreshing. perhaps i'm biased towards rock music (and this station plays mostly rock) but the whole "attitude" of the station, the programming, the interviews, the deejays and even the website shows folks behind this station really give serious thought to what they do.

the daily interviews are just great! it's a great learning opportunity for everyone to learn, not just from the business end but also about life as there are sessions by life coaches too. heck, the interviews are even saved in mp3 format as podcasts and could be downloaded from the site. i've saved a whole bunch of them and just cycle thru my ipod during some days when i commute by train (and still keep an eye on the occasional pretty lass i come by). so who says guys can't multi-task?

then of course, unlike other radio stations run by seemingly juvenile deejays who think what's going on with britney spears life is more important than issues that may affect your life directly, the deejays here don't yak too much! one of my major turn-off is deejays who just love the sound of their voice, sometimes yaking over nothing and laughing loudly just to fill the airwaves with some noise. grrrrr!!!!!

i also like the way they play with the bfm acronym. there's the finance related "bankers, financiers, money-makers", "bring forth money". there's also other fun acronyms like "bmw, ferrari, maserati"...

but the one i like best is "bond frustrates moneypenny". nice pun!

to me still, the best thing is the music. it's not perfect but it's already a great step in the right direction for malaysian radio. get ready for some ccr, pearl jam, u2, led zep, acdc, sting, eric clapton (early stuff), jimi hendrix, grateful dead, inxs, nirvana...

so tune to this station if you are in kuala lumpur. if not, visit the website, you could hear it live from there too.

http://www.bfm.my