As I am writing this so-called quiz, I am straining my eyes just a little bit because I am so exhausted. The internet connection has been a real pain in the butt lately and TM you suck big time! Boo! It’s a love-hate relationship when it comes to dealing with them. Enough about my lament and let’s get to the quiz shall we.

If you think you want to try traveling for the very first time to just about anywhere, you will most probably need a travel partner. Unless you are a true gutsy person and cannot stand traveling with another person or in a group, you can skip this quiz altogether. Let’s cut to the chase and get on with my all time top 8 – “Are you the perfect travel partner quiz?”.

1. When you are booking for a hotel, do you only look out for a

A : 3-5 star but preferably 5 star hotels.

B: anything with a clean bed and bathroom for shower will just do.

2. When you pack you luggage, do you pack them in a

A : the largest, huge-ass suitcase that you  can buy in the store to carry all your different type of day wear, beach way, dinner way, shopping wear, casual wear, club wear, night wear so you’ll look like a real fashionable tourist during your travel.

B : pack as light as possible in a back pack so that you don’t have to check in your bag and with the thought in mind to rotate the pants and tops a couple of times during your travel.

3. The whole point you bought your plane tickets for your travel is because

A : you want to shop, shop, shop, and shop some more and look like the perfect tourist so that you can get ripped off by the locals.

B : you just want to discover the particular country’s beautiful flora and fauna,culture, language, food and tradition to discover about people other than yourself with the only souvenir to bring home is the new experience gathered through out the travel.

4. When you are looking out for food during your travel, you most likely will visit

A : either the Chinese/Indian/Indonesian- Malay restaurant in that country of your travel because you cannot eat without having a taste of your Malaysian food.

B : eat like the local and be adventurous with your taste buds just for the sake of experiencing a totally new cuisine from what you are used to back at home.

5. When you and your travel partner(s) ended up getting  lost in a foreign country, you will most likely be

A : yelling at everyone, be totally irritated because no one can read the map properly and resorting to fidget more and complain because you are too tired and have started to think of the worse to come because hey, you are lost in a country you have no idea about.

B : pull over to the side of the road and take 5 since everyone is tired, get your bearings correct again by reading the map over and over again, and keep going back on the road and use whatever gut feelings that all of you have to get back on the right track. The whole idea is to be calm and keep a positive thought that you will be on the right track pretty soon.

6. Since most travel involves a lot of walking, sometimes running too to catch a bus or train, you are

A : the least fit person ever. The only fast walk or run you have ever done is walking fast to chase the store in the malls.

B : always the type of person who walks fast and simply loves walking what more running just for the heck of it.

7. During your travel, something in the culture of the country you are traveling you find specifically odd and stand against your principle. So, you ended up:

A : bad mouthing the locals out loud in English without knowing that some of the locals do understand what you are saying.

B : just look, mouth zips shut and only speak about what ever that had happened once you and your travel partner are together with yourself.

8. During your travel, your travel partner just found out about a really must-visit place in that country which is not in your initial travel itinerary and the fee you have to pay for it costs a bomb but is boasted to be worth all your money. You choose to:

A: skip it right away because you would rather spend the money on something you can buy and bring back home.

B: ditch your initial itinerary for the day and go head on with the must-visit place ever in that country because it is a total waste to travel all the way without doing this one must-do thing in this country.

Okay, now you are done questioning yourself, which answer did you get the most? If you answer mostly A , frankly speaking, I won’t even want to travel with you because let’s face it, me and you have a total different meaning and mindset towards what travel is all about. Instead, if you answer mostly B, say, Yay! Let’s travel together shall we?

* I was suppose to write 10 questions for this quiz but I was running out of idea for the 9th question. Hey, if you have other questions to add on to this quiz, why don’t you share them in the comment. Probably if we have more question, we can help to filter ‘unlikely’ people to be your travel partner. You do not want to have a disastrous travel just because somebody else in the group has to ruin it. Hehe.

Hey peeps,

Okay I admit that previously I was bragging about putting on more thoughts for a quality content in  my posts; guess what, all those things I’ve said are up for trash. Haha. Well at least just for today though. I’m currently facing one of those connection hiccups and I’m racing against time before this internet connection goes way to slow which means I can’t load up my WP page.

Anyways, I’ve been meaning to write a post about a little mangrove park over at my place but I’m going to let pictures do all the writing and with this kind of internet connection, I can kiss that thought goodbye for tonight. Hence, I’m just putting up a trashy post for now just to keep up with my at least three posts a week regime. Haha.

In case you are reading my posts from Facebook, thanks for reading and guys, drop a comment or two right at the comment button. I know some of you tend to leave a comment right under the link at my Facebook which is okay and great. But, think about it, if you post your comments over at this site, other people get to see your piece of thought or comment too. Sharing is caring, no? =p

Okay peeps. Gotta stop here before this laptop starts acting up with more of its annoying antiques. Til better posts to come!

If you are on a look out for a good read to generate your new travel ideas, here is a list of sites that I frequently visit or have subscribed in my reader:

1. Matador Network – boasted as the “World’s Largest Independent Travel Magazine”. There are so many things to offer in this site from travel tips, to living a life as a travel journalist, a travel blogger, and reading endless amount of travel journeys and discoveries especially if you can’t literally travel to a particular place. This is one travel magazine that every traveler has to read and by far is among one of my favorites.

2. Briefcase to Backpack – a great website for those looking for a career break or a gap year where you will get brilliant travel ideas and list of things you can achieve and accomplish within your gap year.

3. Travel Channel.com – what easier way to get more ideas from none other than the Travel Channel. If you can’t quite catch the channel on the tv, have a quick go at their site and you won’t be left disappointed for missing that favorite Travel Channel show of yours on tv.

For local travel  or more like Malaysian outdoor adventure travel,  I have subscribed to these favorite bloggers of mine:

1. Jamie Soon – I bumped into her website after googling for Sg. Kampar white water rafting event and sure enough her blog comes on the first page of the Google search. Besides topping the rank in the search engine, I’m supposing Jamie is an avid traveler and outdoor adventurer girl. You got to check out where she had been to and I must say, I want to go there too!

2. Teoh Yew Aun – this guy is an all out , outdoor adventure junkie. His writing was recently published in the local NST if I’m not mistaken. I’m also sensing he dreams to become the Malaysian version of Bear Grylls which I think is quite possible with his kind of ‘enthusiasm‘. It’s really interesting that he takes the time to video and document his jungle discoveries. That takes a whole lot of effort man and the videos are cool too.

3. My dad’s Ride a bike travel blog! He’s on a mission for a Round The World trip (RTW) by 2012. If you are into bikes,go check his blog. I do hope he gets to write more though and let’s hope he can document his biking journey well. FYI, my dad christened his favorite RTW bike as Camel which is a Kawasaki KLR 650. We still think Camel is a funny name to call a bike. =p

4. Zue’s Cerita Travel blog. Zue is my old time friend from Penang and a true Penangnite she is. She’ll be going for a Euro trip next month and I can’t wait to check out on her itineraries because Euro trip is not a bad idea for this year travel ain’t it? =p

Yep. There goes my list of where I read to get my travel ideas. So I want to know, where do you read to get that crazy, wild travel ideas of yours?

Hi peeps!

If you have noticed, most of my recent posts (which you can check out on my sidebar on the right or go straight to my Archives page that I’ve created just today!) are listed under the Outdoor Adventures, Travel and Sports tag. I can’t help but writing about those three categories because guess what, my life is currently whirling around planning for my next travel or outdoor escapades and ‘dreaming’ about my to-dos travel list for this 2010. I suppose you guys are doing the same thing too yourself!

Also, I’m working to create and publish only quality contents for YaszAmzah.com and currently my weekly target is to have at least three publish posts per week. I know top bloggers have a post published for everyday of the week but for the sake of maintaining that said ‘quality content’, I’m sticking for just three personally written, original content as for now for this blog. You know, I do have a couple of other blogs to maintain at the same time too. However,my primary focus will be YaszAmzah.com because I’m thinking, I just need to establish that much needed self branding first. =)

With that said, I just hope you guys will stick around and check out my blog’s update from time to time now. Currently, I do have a couple of travel or outdoor adventures topics that are pending for writing and do stick around to check it out.

If you have not subscribed to receive YaszAmzah.com latest updates, you can do so by clicking on this link or by clicking the subscribe to my rss feed right at the last line of this post.

Alright then, catch you guys soon!

I’ve created this recipe a couple of days  back and when I say created that actually means I didn’t even Google for any cinnamon chicken recipes on the net (God, how geeky is that…=)) and I’ve never experimented cooking with cinnamon powder before except using a cinnamon stick in curries of course. I just had the feeling that I got to marinate the chicken drumsticks that I have and throw in some of the spices available in my current kitchen into the marinate.

So this is how I make my original cinnamon chicken recipe:

1. Chicken drumstick washed and cleaned.

2. Throw in some generous amount of cinnamon powder and Italian seasoning ( if you don’t have this, you can always use any types of mix herbs usually comes readily in a pack).

3. To add some spiciness which we Asians must always have; the spicier the better really; I added a generous amount of black pepper and this wicked Baba’s Chili powder. The redness of the chili powder adds a good blend of color with the already sweet and brown colored cinnamon powder.

4. Lastly, I added some EVOO – extra virgin olive oil ( or any types of vegetable oil will do) and a touch of salt because I’m very particular with my sodium intake. Haha.

That done, mix it all together and it smells really good already. You got in here a perfect blend of original sweet flavor of the cinnamon which is very distinct in it’s own cinnamony way with a touch of heat from the superb chili powder and black pepper. Leave it to marinate overnight and the longer it takes to marinate, the better the cinnamon chicken will taste. Longer time will mean extra time for the flavors to  blend well into the chicken meat.

To cook it, simply heat up and lightly oil the pan. In my case, I’m using a cookingware from Fissler which is really great because once you have the lid covered over the pan, it’ll speed up the cooking time and it is almost like frying plus steaming your meal. I let the chicken drumsticks to brown on one side – 5 to 7 minutes before flipping it on the other side, all the while putting on the cover. I guess by having the lid on, it helps to retain the moisture in the chicken because it won’t ended up being brown and dry.

I remove the drumsticks once they are cooked and I also deglaze the bottom of the pan with some milk and water or you can use a mix of  plain flour with water to create a gravy from the brown bits left on the pan. Once that done, transfer back the drumsticks into the pan and let is mix together with the gravy. Finally, get ready to eat. It’s so yummy and you are going to go for seconds and thirds on this one. You can trust me on that and it’s for sure peeps.

On another note, this cinnamon chicken recipe is suitable for people who are always on the go and don’t have much time to prep up for your food. You can prepare the marinate over the weekend and have a delish meal just waiting to be fried up over a pan in 20 minutes tops. Give this recipe a go and do tell me what do you think about it in the comment. Last but not least, Happy cooking!