Kam Cheng Session - May 2009 at Moey's Condo.

It's been a long time since our last "Kam Cheng" session (the last one being in January last year at Sibaraku). So, a couple of us pooled together and organized another gathering last week, in conjunction with the Chinese dumpling (Bak Chang) festival. What is a Bak Chang? Well, it can be best described as glutinous rice with various fillings ranging from beans to pork wrapped up in lotus leaves and tied in a shape of a tetrahedron. Um, better follow this LINK to get a better idea....

Apparently, there's a story to this. Sometime during the Warring States period, this festival commemorates the death of a famous Chinese poet named Qu Yuan from the kingdom of Chu. This famous poet is well known for his patriotism - he tried (unsuccessfully) to warn his king and countrymen against the policy of expanding his country's economy for their Qin neighbors. When the Qin Dynasty general Bai Qi took Yingdu, the Chu capital, in 278 BC, Qu Yuan's grief was so intense that he drowned himself in the Miluo river after penning the Lament for Ying. According to legend, packets of rice were thrown into the river to prevent fish from eating the poet's body. There is another version which states that the dumpling were given to placate a dragon that lived in the river.


No, we don't make these Bak Chang to throw into the river. After the enormous sum of money the Melaka government spent to clean up the Melaka river, dumping anything of the sort into the river would probably get you a night in jail and a lighter wallet....

Anyway, back to our party. The "mastermind" of the operation was most likely Koh LS or Cho LY. Anyway, we each paid ~RM20 to cover the cost of the food. Mr Moey was generous enough to sponsor the Satay, and chicken wings were the courtesy of Mr Law.

We ate heartily, a mixture of various types of food, ranging from fried noodles, steam boat, and satay + fried chicken mentioned earlier.


After eating, we retreated to the side of the pool where we listened to some soft music and chatted, leaving all our cares behind. The occupancy of the Golden Coast Condominium was really low, with most of the units owned by Singaporeans. Since it was a weekday, you could say we practically had the entire place to ourselves.

After awhile, when things were starting to get boring, Mr Moey brought out his indoor putting set and we started to play a game, each taking turns putting the golf ball into one of the two holes. Miss all 3 tries, and you have to eat Satay (initially, everyone was rushing to eat some, but after awhile, everyone's full, so this became now some form of penalty instead!).




Having much fun, we soon lost track of the passage of time, and finally came the time for us to go home. We helped tidy up and carry down the cooking utensils (we were on the 3rd floor) to Lye Yin's car.

Well, it was truly good that we have such people like Koh LS and Lye Yin to take the initiative to organize such events, that really helped us to release some of the tension from everyday work, as well as to foster closer ties amongst working colleagues.

Looking forward to the next upcoming event then (most likely the mid-autumn festival sometime in September)!

Check out the rest of the photos [HERE]