Chinese Food in Kazakhstan @ Turandot Princess

Singaporeans like food so much and JJ and I are no exceptions. We tried to find back the taste of Singapore through cooking but only to partial success. The previous weekend we finally decided to go to the Chinese restaurant which Faith mentioned and gave praises various times in her blog. The restaurant was called Turandot Princess, which has a few branches around Kazakhstan and it was probably the only proper Chinese restaurant in Almaty.

After checking the location on the website and the map, we set off in the evening to the furthest place that we are going alone so far in Kazakhstan (actually it is just a 15mins bus ride away). After walking around the area for around half an hour, we finally found the restaurant which was just hidden behind Auezov Drama Theatre, a five minute walk from where we alighted.

On the outside it looks just like a normal eatery, or even a little rundown, yet the decorations was obvious enough for us to know that it was a Chinese restaurant. However, after entering the restaurant, the interior design was somewhat impressive. Initially we were given a Russian menu, which we try to make out what food was each item was with the pictures and our limited vocabulary, but after the waiter realize that we took quite some time to order, he passed us a menu in Chinese. Spoilt with choices, we ordered Cashew Nut Chicken, Hot Plate Tofu, Wanton Soup and Man Tou.

Overall the food was not bad, around 60% authentic I will say. The tofu and the chicken were quite tasty, though the man tou tasted normal and the wanton was not Chinese at all. The price was quite reasonable as we spend around S$16 each. Probably we will be going there more often from now onwards to satisfy our home food craving.

Curry Puff Adventure

Following a successful pineapple adventure 2 weeks back, we decided to continue our journey for nice self-made Singapore food with a curry puff adventure. After getting our curry puff recipe from Foodbuzz.

e went on to purchase ingredients from Gros and green bazaar. The recipe that we had was not as comprehensive as the one we had for pineapple tarts, and most importantly it does not tell us how many curry puffs will the recipe produce. Nonetheless, we did a rough estimation and proceeded on the experiment by using 1/7 of the original recipe.

Things went smoothly for the fillings as cooking chicken, potato and curry was not difficult at all. The dough was a bit difficult, though we manage to produce some sort of dough in the end. However, the dough seems a bit small and in the end it was enough for only about 4 mini curry puffs. The first one went pretty well but we got greedy to make bigger curry puffs. Unfortunately, I think because the dough was contaminated with curry powder, the external got burnt when deep frying while the inner dough was not cooked. In the end, the two bigger curry puffs we made were deemed inedible and thrown away. As for dinner, we had chicken and potato curry with noodles. There goes a few hours of effort and now we have to think of new dishes to cook for Singapore cooking day and find more reliable and comprehensive recipe.

Curry Puff from Space

The burnt curry puffs

Trying to make a weird shape curry puff

Within the Curry Puff

The Good Old Slack Days

Blogging had somewhat slowed down a bit as school work can actually get heavy. However, if you are concerned if I’m still alive, check me out on twitter (userid the_wilson) where I am more active as it takes less time. It’s now 2am Kazak time and I had just finished reading the articles for tomorrow’s current affair quiz. Not that it is usual for exchange students to mug hard considering that we just need a pass and not an A+, but the pricing of the internet and overcrowding of the computer labs force me to only start researching at around 12am, when internet is affordable. Now that everyone is getting busy, let me share with you how slack life can be in the first three weeks of school, with my roomie JJ as an example. If you think he is hardworking, look closer.

POKEMON!!!

Yes, you did not see wrongly, this is Pokemon (Emerald I think). That’s how bored we were before.

I hate planning for summer

While most people going exchange are looking forward to their summer tour, I am not particularly looking forward to it, especially during the planning stage. Probably because I don’t have all the money in the world, so I can’t choose whereever I want to go. Next, I have a subsidy for my airfare, but the condition is that the return trip must start from Almaty. In addition, the places I wanted to go most are located at two different ends of Kazakhstan, Irkutsk on the right, and Abu Dhabi on the left.

After a day of research, I have come up with 4 options.

Option 1 – Almaty – Moscow – Irkutsk (by Tran-Siberia Train) – Beijing – Singapore
This option will cost me $1600 without stopover in Beijing and an additional $300 if I chose to stop over in Beijing. Effectively I will be forfeiting the subsidy and more importantly, I will miss Abu Dhabi.

Option 2 – Almaty – Moscow – Almaty – Abu Dhabi – Singapore
The most cheapest option on my list and probably I will fork out less than S$1000 after subsidy. Nonetheless, I’ll miss the railway, which I don’t mind, but I’ll miss Irkutsk, a place which I doubt I’ll have the chance to go again.

Option 3 – Almaty – Moscow – Irkutsk (by tran-siberia train) – Moscow (by air) – Almaty – Abu Dhabi – Singapore
The most crazy travel plan I suppose which will cost around S$1700 after subsidy. However, I get to go to Irkutsk, Abu Dhabi and get a taste of the tran-siberia railway.

Option 4 – Almaty – Moscow – Irkutsk – Moscow – Almaty – Abu Dhabi – Singapore
Similar to option 3 except that I will not be not be taking the train at all. By not taking the train, I get to save $350.

Right now, it’s really hard to decide which path to take, and I have to buy the tickets this Friday if I want to claim the subsidy. On top of that, I need to take into account JJ’s plan as well. Considering that we have very different places and goals when traveling, there is a high chance that I might go travel solo. That may be quite scary as I doubt my Russian will be good enough by then, but I suppose it will be fun going to places I wanted to go.

It’s a foggy evening

After I come out of my Russian class today, KIMEP looks completely different from what it used to be. It was terribly foggy.

Pineapple Tarts Adventure

JJ and I had been cooking some dinner meals of pasta and noodles, with some turning out okay and some a complete failure. Today, with my persuasion, we decided to be more adventurous to try to bake pineapple tarts! After the first attempt failed as the ingredients failed to become a dough, the second attempt was much more successful. Here’s the final product!

Pineapple Tarts, Wilson Style

Yeah, I understand that it totally don’t look like the pineapple tarts we eat in Singapore, and it crumbles super easily, but trust me, it was yummy! We made a total of 12 tarts but gave almost all of them to the people in the dormitory and other exchange students, and they liked it! 3plus hours of effort well spent! Shall improvise it the next time I make it!

Hit the 100,000 Mark

After spending 3 weeks, or 18 days in exact in Kazakhstan, I have spent 100,000! In tenge (Kazakhstan’s currency) of course, and that is about $1000 SGD. Sound a lot but considering that I paid 44100 tenge (approximately S$440) for the ENTIRE semester of dormitory fees, 15000 tenge on textbooks rental and other administrative fees, my spending seems rather justified.

Apart from the dormitory which I think is probably one of the cheapest in all the exchange destinations, things here are not particularly cheap. Rice with meat will cost approximately S$3 in the school cafeteria and for a proper meal it will cost around S$20. It will be cheaper to cook ourselves, which is what I am doing occasionally, even though groceries prices are about the same as Singapore. Transport here is cheap though, with student fare a one way bus trip will just cost around 25cents, and even a taxi ride will cost $3-4 for a decent distance.  Therefore if anyone wish to spend little on their exchange, Kazakhstan is probably the way to go.

Source: http://fwmail.teenee.com/

Freeeeeeeeeezing

Just as I thought winter was over, today seems to be the coldest day so far. This is WINTER, and I survived with 2 layers.

Temperature at KIMEP

Here’s the temperature in school, and I suspect it’s even colder when we were outside just now. Tonight will be a cold night…

How NOT to wear during Winter

Today, I went out around noon to meet JJ and Peter for lunch. Looking at the thermometer which reads 8 degrees, I decided that fleece shall be warm enough today. After lunch, we went Black and Brown for coffee and internet and soon it began to snow. It was the biggest snow we had seen so far and weather forecast called it a ‘snow storm’ though it’s not really that bad. Nonetheless, snow means temperature had dropped below 0 degrees and I had no outer except my fleece. GG. During dinner, we had no choice but to leave the café to head to Kafahat to eat. Fortunately, it did not feel as cold as it seems. The bad thing is, the temperature is not that cold so snow was rather wet and my non-waterproof fleece seemed to attract snow well. By the time we reached Kafahat, my fleece became white.

Completely white

Survived a week in school

Ended my first week in KIMEP with a wonderful lesson in Advertising and Media Sales. Classes here are different from SMU as instead of having a single 3hr cls, we had either 3 classes of 50mins each or 2 classes of 75mins each. As far as I tried, I still have a 5 day work week and fortunately most of my afternoons are rather free. On the other hand, KIMEP and SMU are similar as class participation is a part of grading criteria but at least it only resulted in stupid comments here, unlike the countless stupid questions in SMU. Projects, which are my strength in SMU, somehow became my greatest fear here. First of all it’s hard to find project mates or rather I am too shy to enter a group. Next, the unfamiliarity with companies here, especially for marketing or management modules, may hinder me from contributing sufficiently to the group. After surviving a week, I shall just run through briefly the 5 modules I had this week.

Introduction to International Relations – A rather interesting class and somehow there’s only 6 students in the class, so I could class part freely.

Services Marketing – I only confirmed this course today, so yet to find project mates and it may be hard to do so as many students in the class had already found a group. The prof actually gave a sticker whenever a student participated, so naturally there are lots of irrelevant comments. Quite a pity since this module is the most relevant to what I’m learning in SMU.

Small Business Management – Possibility of working on a real company for this module, which means GG. Got a Kazakh into my group so two more group mates to get going.

Beginning Russian – My nightmare module as Russian is simply freaking hard. Interestingly, our prof doesn’t speak much English and it’s funny how she communicate with us in Russian we do not understand and very basic English.

Advertising and Media Sales – I saved this for the last as this is my favourite module so far as the people in the class are all very friendly and the prof ROCKS. For today’s lecture, the in-class presentation is the case where a Singapore director is here and new to Kazakhstan, so each group have to come up with a 10 minute presentation to explain the major medias, advertisers and advertising trends. Apparently, I’m the “Singapore director” so what I did in class was to go to different groups to listen to their presentations. This type of treatment to an exchange student was probably unheard of in SMU or other universities, and I truly felt honoured.

Typical classroom