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Buka Puasa Random Photos

2006-09-30T12:15:00.000+08:00

A flurry of chores

2006-09-30T12:04:00.000+08:00

This morning I woke up and immediately glued myself to my PC. Can't help it, really. After being without access to the Internet for 1 week, I was desparate to surf the net! Like Ws said; we are so dependant on technology and when it fails we become so miserable without it. Case in point!

With the new Linksys WiFi adaptor I purchased last weekend, I was enjoying faster download speed and I found myself browsing and viewing movie trailers. Some trailers that caught my eye are:

1. Children of Men
2. Babel
3. Curse of the Golden Flower
4. James Bond: Casino Royale
5. The Queen

Then I went about with my chores: changing the bedsheet, clearing up some clutter in my room, cleaned Bunny's home and finally settled down to my breakfast that consisted of a coconut bun, a cup of coffee and a banana. Flipped through the papers when I noticed a tick crawling out of Milo. They've got a serious case of tick infestation and my Mom applied an anti-tick solution she purchased from the vet on both Milo and Phoebe. It works I tell ya, the ticks were all crawling out of their skins. So there I was, combing Milo for ticks after my breakfast. I caught 13 from Milo and 1 from Phoebe.

I dropped the ticks into a small tub of water where they will drown helplessly and sink to their watery graves. I hate ticks!

Going to head out soon to KLCC with M to do a spot of shopping!

I want a camera!

2006-09-09T02:40:00.000+08:00

I am suddenly wanting to get a Nikon D50 for myself. The price is pretty affordable now and after familiarizing myself with probably 20% of the camera's features, I think it'll be a great idea and possibly time to own one of my own. I will be heading down to KL to check out the prices first and then sit and think if I really do want to own one.

M wants to upgrade to the D80 soon, I could buy her old D50 off her!

Decisions, decisions.
Decisions versus temptations!

Dinner on Fridays can be very intimidating

2006-09-08T11:59:00.000+08:00

Today is Friday.

There was a dinner for Sy's belated Birthday. This was proposed by Ws who missed it when he was still in Washington. I was lazy (YES READ: LAZY, Sy) and so took up Sy's offer to come pick me up from work before heading to Sticky Fingers along Jalan Mesui in KL. Good thing Ek was in the car already, so there wasn't any delay in timing.

The roads were unbelieably packed. I rained in the evening (why does it always rain in the evenings?) and this made traffic even worse. I am so glad that Ek drove and I did not drive to Sticky's myself. I would have lost my left leg to cramps from operating the clutch of my car. Thanks guys! We were boxed in by cars, buses, vans, motorcycles - anything with wheels and moved. So much so, it got a little claustrophobic!

We arrived in the restaurant first, Ws and M arrived shortly after. The restaurant was thankfully quiet today. However, the standard of the food today didn't seem to be on par with what I experienced with Sy and M a month or so ago. We ordered starters: mushrooms in chilli and salt, mushrooms in garlic aioli and potato wedges. For mains? Pork ribs all round, please! M had the aglio oglio. They ran out of mangoes (I suspect) and the waiter came back to me and apologized that the Tango Smoothie I ordered was unavailable. I sulked and ordered a Gym something instead (strawberry+banana - why must they name it with such weird names?).

The food came in trickles. The ribs arrived soon and I ate like there was no tomorrow. Sorry, I was hungry. It happens. Unfortunately, my portion of the pork ribs were a little lacking in the BBQ sauce. Thankfully the meat was still tender and juicy and this really allowed me to finish my meal in contented silence. When I was done, Ek was still struggling with his. I offered to take some of his ribs and he plopped half on my plate. I polished it off anyway. Ugh, no more meat for the next 24 hours, please!

Sy was presented with her presents: 1 from yours truly, M and Ws and one more from Ws himself. I won't say what they are here, in case she hasn't opened them yet as not to spoil her surprise. She was happy to receive them. :)

We chatted for awhile but this didn't last long as everyone was tired. We all came straight from work, braved the jam and had dinner! What did you expect? We were as fresh as a wedge of lime? I think not!

Ek and Sy dropped us back at my office where I got my car and drove home. It has been such a long day!

Of work

2006-09-08T11:58:00.000+08:00

Hmm. Recently work has been rather quiet. With no new instructions from management, I find myself generating work for myself. It's the only way I can keep my sanity in check. Of course, it's also the only way I can keep myself from falling asleep (where a loud thud could possibly be heard as my head hits the keyboard and I wake up moments later with imprints from the keyboard on my forehead). You must be crazy if you can clock into work and be content not doing anything.

It's been challenging being trusted with pieces of work already when I still know so little of the bank's operations. Most importantly to me, I still do not know entirely how they access data from the sea of data stored in what they call data warehouses. There's a learning process allright, and it's a steep one at that. However, having said that, I think I've done pretty well in the first 3 months. I've not screwed up big time yet, my bosses are happy (so I think!) with my work and I am getting along well with my new colleagues.

Yesterday was interesting as I got a business call from South Korea. The caller could possibly be my distant cousin as he shares the same surname as I. As I already know, the team in South Korea are going to implement the module I manage and called to ask for some guidance on what needs to be done during their implementation phase. Wow, suddenly I feel so important! :D

Today work picked up again. Which is good! I welcome it with open arms!

A photo blog of Saturday morning baking apple pie

2006-09-06T01:00:00.000+08:00

Nice Granny Smith apples!

Peel the apples.

Slice them up.

All of them!

Cook them for a bit.

A spockle of flour.

Get them hands dirty (I washed my hands).

Voila! Pastry dough!

Pop it in the oven.

Tada!

What happened over the weekend? Part 2

2006-09-06T00:41:00.000+08:00

[SATURDAY, 1 September 2006]

Today, as anticipated, my entire morning was allocated to baking an apple pie for Sy and Ek's pot luck. It was tiring, but fun at the same time because it has been a very long time since I've baked or cooked anything in the kitchen. In fact, I still owe M her Pina Colada muffins which I promised I'd bake for her, oh, about 1 year ago :D

Once the apple pie was done. I took a short rest before heading to M's place to bring her over to my place. I had a quick lunch and took a short nap.

After my nap, I went on to prepare the second dish which is a nice salad with grapfruit pulp. I picked coral lettuce leaves and another lettuce leave (I forgot the name!) and paired it with rocket (or arigula) which gives off such a nice solid nutty flavour. The tart grapefruit should balance the taste of the nutty salad. For the dressing, I whisked some extra virgin olive oil, lemon zest, lemon juice, grapefruit juice and salt/pepper to taste. I made the mistake of using extra virgin olive oil because I found that the flavour from the oil was too overpowering, clouding the rest of the ingredients I added. This resulted in a very faint taste of lemon.

With the salad out of the way. I made jelly shots! Rum jelly shots to be precise. Just get a packet of jelly (I chose lime because rum goes well with lime - like a daiquiri!), prepare it according to the instructions printed on the little carton and add rum to your heart's desire! Chuck it into the fridge for at least 2 hours for the jelly to set.

Ok with my share of food that could probably feed 4 people, we headed off to Sy's place only to find out that we were the latest! Doh! There was plenty of food! Fried rice, portabello mushrooms, curry chicken (which everyone avoided, hee hee), fried tofu, cheese & ham rolls, buffalo wings, chicken breast and eggrolls from Chilli's, tong suey, my apple pie and salad and semi fredo for dessert. Packets of fruit juices and green tea to drink. I'm very sure I missed a food item or two.

With dinner stored in my stomach, we proceeded to play a game with the jelly shot I made. Each one gets a card and puts it face open on his forehead. The idea is to push the timer up starting from a base of 5 seconds in increments of 1 seconds by whoever is playing. The person with the lowest card value will be penalized by doing the jelly shot for the duration of the timer set! Jf and I did not even touch a drop. B, Kl and Ek did all the slurping. Alchoholics! I didn't even had any and I so wanted to lose badly :p

Next on the agenda was watching SATC with M and the girls while the guys played mahjong. Surprisingly, I quite enjoyed watching the episodes especially when it was accompanied by "Aww"s, "Umm"s and "I want a boy friend like that (coming from married people, yeah?)".

Time went by pretty quick and before you know it, it was already 1am. Time to go home!

The night was a blast, wished it would last; but there are not enough hours to keep and I need my sleep!

What happened over the weekend?

2006-09-05T23:54:00.000+08:00

Here's what happened over the weekend!

[FRIDAY, 31st August 2006]

I took the Friday off so I had a super long weekend. 4 days! So on Friday M went to the nearby hospital to undergo a health checkup. You know, those normal packaged health plans. Registration was easy. But the first thing the nurse said was, "Do you have an appointment? Now very long. You need to wait." My reaction was "Oh boy...".

Surprisingly, 3/4 of the medical tests on the list were done pretty quickly. Like x-ray scan, blood sample extraction, etc. The longest wait was the remainder of the tests as it was lunch time then and it was a Friday (long lunches!). We had our lunch there in this little corner where they served pies and chicken chop and other food. It was so-so only. We walked about to while the time away and eventually decided to sit. So there I was there reading my book and M dozed off while waiting for the doctor to return from her lunch.

By the time all the tests were done, it was close to 3pm! By now I was already officially 62% in grumpy mode already. 5 hours spent in the hospital!

With whatever energy I had left. I dragged myself to Ikano to pick up groceries for Saturday's pot luck get together at Sy and Ek's. I wanted to watch Tiger Dragon Gate and was wondering if they still screened it today. So I dragged myself and M to Cineleisure (which is so crappy I don't know why I went there - they have such limited movies!) and the movie isn't being screened anymore. Sulking a little, I went to Cold Storage for shopping.

Struggled with the shopping trolley at first and then I started to cruise the grocery aisles. Finally went to the check-out to pay and AGAIN I break my budget for grocery. Why do I always do that?

With groceries in hand, I loaded them into my car and began to head for home. M said she wanted to go to the optician to check her eyesight. Sigh. This day never ends! It was close to 5pm already. Got to the optician and just sat there staring at the myriad of pharmacutical goods stocked in the shop (the optician plies her trade in a pharmacy).

Ooh! After all that. We were finally home! Hit the bed and I dozed off immediately. The balance of today can wait. Dinner included.

Not gone yet!

2006-09-03T10:43:00.000+08:00

I'm not dead yet! Just not in the mood to put anything yet.

I will put in a fat post soon!

I'm toying about the idea of getting my own hosted website for this blog. Stay tuned!

With half of Merdeka day gone...

2006-08-31T17:04:00.000+08:00

Here's a little post on what we did this Merdeka morning.

I went to M's place after refueling my car (RM52.XX, GASP!) and we headed for the National Monument. It was 8:00am then. I was already busy snapping photos of the surroundings. Sy and Ek arrived soon after and we met at the site of the monument itself. It was still early and the air was still cooling and crisp. In short: pleasant!

There's a commemorative obelix (sorry, I don't know what it is called) before the National Monument that commemorates the brave souls that have fallen during the Japanese occupation of Malaya. I gladly snapped up some photos of this obelix.

The National Monument is huge! It's the first time I've seen it up close (I normally see them in pictures and on the TV screen) and it has a nice little pond in front of it that shoots out jets of water at timed intervals. The monument was erected to commemorate the fall of Communism in Malaya. Good thing is, the monument isn't crowded with people. Then again, I think to myself, "Does it even get crowded at all?". The photos I took of the monument were'nt that impressive after all as there was not enough sunlight cast on the monument itself. In front of the wide open podium of the monument, you can actually see Le Meridien and KL Hilton in the skyline. If you maintain this orientation and look to the right, you can see the Millenium Tower in Bukit Damansara.

Exhausting all possible photo opportunities at the National Monument. We made our way to the Lake Gardens. The skies were overcast. The air temperature was getting a little warmer as the hour went by. Already the gardens were packed with picnic-goers and families too. We parked our cars and made our way to the central area of the gardens were the main body of the lake was. I've recently been to Lake Gardens about 1 year ago with M and visiting it again this round, I realised that there were many new features built! The path we trodded on for example, was just a beaten tarmac path then. The dinosaur park (er, yeah, it's there, go see for yourself if you don't believe me. A little sad looking, though.) has a huge playground area in the middle of it! There are more tables and more benches and weird little patches of land made into little sub-gardens. Along the way, we were taking photos. It's just too bad that the sun refuses to wake up this morning. All the photos will have a tint of gloominess to it. To counter this I adjusted the camera's white balance setting to "Cloudy", just to inject some colour into the photos.

The main of point of coming to Lake Gardens was to create Mentos Fountains. What's a Mentos fountain? Well it is simply:

Diet/Light Coke + Mentos = Mentos Fountain.

The chemical reaction between the candy and the drink releases alot of gas (I'm suspecting CO2, but let's not go there) thus creating a "fountain" of Coke! Sy spent last night threading the candies (or ammo, heh heh) together. Thanks!

We were hungry and decided on a free table to setup our gear and finally eat! I had my V-Soy (the best!) and I bought 4 packets of nasi lemak from the petrol station earlier. Sy was nice to make us salami buns and ham sandwiches. They were nice! I had an extra helping of nasi lemak to remedy my hunger.

With breakfast out of the way, it was time for our experiment! We made three attempts. Sy was the sacrificial, er I mean, OFFICIAL Mentos releaser for the first and last attempt. M was tagged for the second. We had official photographers for the experiment too. Ek and me! (By the way, I took a shot where Sy was running for her life as the Coke bottle erupted with Coke! RM2.00 gets you one ;) )Here's a listing on the outcome of each attempt:

Attempt 1: A narrow nozzle was fashioned out of the bottle cap. This yielded pretty ok results.
Attempt 2: No cap this time. The fountain was kinda sad.
Attempt 3: The big Kahuna! Full load of Mentos and nozzle in place. Nice!

Sadly each attempt lasts for only 5 seconds. When we were screaming in glee (I wasn't, I was maintaining my professional composure), other park goers nearby were watching us. Whether they were amused or thinking we were mad, I don't know. ;)

After the fountains, we packed up and headed to the playground and ate ice-cream. My lychee popsicle sucks. Blegh! Here, I was forced (forced! Not ever coerced!) into posing for humiliating photos as Sy and M snapped away. Sniffles...I will not go into details.

Finally at about 11:00am. We went back to our cars, said our good-byes and drove home. Man, was I tired! It was fun though! :) Not bad, I took about 100 photos!

Smile

2006-08-31T08:14:00.000+08:00

Smile though your heart is aching
Smile even though it's breaking
When there are clouds in the sky, you'll get by
If you smile through your fear and sorrow
Smile and maybe tomorrow
You'll see the sun come shining through for you

Light up your face with gladness
Hide every trace of sadness
Although a tear may be ever so near
That's the time you must keep on trying
Smile, what's the use of crying?
You'll find that life is still worthwhile
If you just smile

That's the time you must keep on trying
Smile, what's the use of crying?
You'll find that life is still worthwhile
If you just smile

Restless

2006-08-31T07:05:00.000+08:00

Dear blog,

I didn't really sleep well this morning. I remember having a strange dream. Then I woke up. It was probably 4:00am. I could hear my brother coming back. Then I think I went back to sleep. I woke up again automatically. It could be 5:00am or 6:00am.

I don't feel rested at all.

I'm up now and soon I'll going to the National Monument soon for photo taking.

I have to keep reminding myself to have a online photo gallery to put in my favourite photos I took.

Suddenly I want to go back to sleep.

A tinge of lonliness

2006-08-30T23:05:00.000+08:00

I am so tired today. Fatigue is finally catching up. It accumulates and then it slams you like a sledgehammer. I was trying to keep awake while driving home from work. Everything was a blur. During lunch today the sounds from my colleagues seem to sound like humming.

When I got home, I played a little XBox and then proceeded to channel surf.

After dinner I had this slight tinge of lonliness. Sigh. Must be the tiredness affecting me. Should probably sleep it off.

I have to wake up early tomorrow for a photo excursion to Tugu Negara with M, Sy & Ek. Sy is making salami sandwiches (dunno edible or not one...haha kidding!) for snack/lunch.

Happy Merdeka, Malaysia!

Boring sleepy Tuesday

2006-08-30T00:32:00.000+08:00

Yawn. I lack sleep. I am so sleepy at work. I take a cup of coffee in hope that I can combat sleepiness at work but it only works a little. I would love to have more cups, like some people can and do, but more than one and I'll get headaches.

Lunch came. I had burnt Marmite chicken. Sigh! I half-heartedly finished my food and listened to my fellow colleagues chat away. I could only catch chunks of the conversation. Most of the time it was just a droning sound.

Back to my desk. Moments later I nodded off several times. The SAS code in front of me look the same all the time. Heh. I guess that's what happens when you don't have enough sleep.

Then come 6pm I checked the traffic condition below and it was pretty much gridlocked...again! Jf and Sw invited me to go to KLCC to while away the time till traffic eased up. So off we went to KLCC and I followed them shopping. They kept asking me if I was bored and I said I am fine. I've done this a thousand times already! Conditioned already, yeah? :) Actually I was kinda hungry already, but I thought I'd let them shop first before I start complaining aloud that I am hungry.

Dinner was at Genki Sushi and we had a nice time talking about all things work, life, music, books, Robbie Williams and foundation. Tummy filled, I followed Jf to the supermarket where she got her Japanese jelly and later her dry cleaning while Sw went off to get something to stave off boredom on her trip outstation soon.

Guess my boring day had a good ending after all.

Like a wolf!

2006-08-29T00:51:00.000+08:00

After massage at Embun. M and I proceeded to Marmalade for our lunches (it was close to 5pm). She had scones while I had what big boys have: a hearty bowl of beef stew! And to go with it a nice glass of latte. I was so hungry I finished every bit of beef, every strand of alfalfa, the single leave of coral lettuce and licked the bowl clean! Ok, kidding on the licking bit. Mmm! Hits the spot!

Bliss

2006-08-29T00:04:00.000+08:00

Yesterday I went to Embun in Plaza Mont Kiara for a much needed massage. M financed the massage for me. Thanks! :) The setup of the place was ok, pretty decent. When I walked into the spa (very loosely used these days) I was greeted by the smell of lemongrass. Which is a good thing because I like lemongrass. I think my favourite scents are lemongrass, peppermint, lavender and rose.

I was treated to a nice 1 hour long foot massage (by a guy - awkward!). First a 10 minute feet soak followed by the nice gentle massage. Nice! Blissful! So peaceful and quiet. Next was the 1.5 hour traditional massage (which is very identical to Balinese I decided later) and Isty was my masseuse. I tell you, she can squash whole watermelons with her hands! While I think I suffered more than enjoyed when she was maiming my legs, the back shoulders and neck was pretty nice. Then it was the head and I think I dozed off for a bit.

After a good 2.5 hours, I would say that I was thoroughly relaxed. Except that my legs are a tad bit sore. However, I think I still prefer Energy Day Spa as their setup looks nicer (very serene), they have a nice open air patio and deck-chairs for you to read or just chill after a nice aromatheray session.

Things that go creak

2006-08-27T12:14:00.000+08:00

The other day during the SAS training I attended. I forgot to mention about this strange incident that happened. It was during the tea break when me and my other colleagues were standing in front of a training room that was unoccupied (lights off and all). The door suddenly creaked open by itself! Not fully open, just ajar. Dg noticed the sound of creaking and the motion of the door gently open and looked back at me. Quickly Dg closed the door and we scurried back into our training room. Bizarre!

Finally!

2006-08-26T22:48:00.000+08:00

Hah! I finally got my stupid Bluetooth dongle to work! All I needed to do was to force it to have a connection with my phone. This was done by using the PC to access the contents in my phone. Hmmph. So troublesome! With this working, I managed to backup all my SMS'es stored in my phone and delete them off for more SMS'es to come. Of late, it has been like managing a stack input system. SMS come in, delete, come in, delete, reserve sms, come in, delete, you get the idea.

Today I am officially not feeling well. Got a bit of a sore throat and stuffed nose. Took some medicine (especially the cough mixture which tasted horrible) and a single dose of Clarinase. I get drowsy when I take Clarinase. I am so light headed now. Light and fluffy!

Just came back from pan fried salmon (ala George Foreman), fruit salad, mashed potatoes, boiled cauliflower and brocolli, pineapples and tee kueh thingy at M's courtesy of her mom. I am thoroughly stuffed!

HDR Photography

2006-08-26T11:28:00.000+08:00

I wanna do HDR photography! A digital photography technique where a scene is captured in multiple stops (exposures) and later goes through a composite process for a truly surreal result. I first discovered the concept of HDR from a forwarded email where it had photos of Tokyo city (I think?) shot using the HDR technique.

Check out HDR photos of Tokyo city!

On absent mindedness

2006-08-26T11:07:00.000+08:00

I realised that with age, I am getting more and more absent-minded. Take yesterday morning for instance. I woke up and started rushing for work. Showered, changed and got into my car only to remember that I forgot to take M's bunny food with me. I got out of my car, unlocked the door to the house and ran upstairs to grab the bag of bunny food. Finally got back into my car. Checked the rear-view mirror and realised something amiss. Sigh. I forgot to wear my glasses. Got out of the car, unlocked the door to the house and ran back upstairs to grab my glasses. That was all that I forgot to take that morning. This little folly cost me 10 minutes!

Dinner at Inner Mongolia

2006-08-26T01:07:00.000+08:00

Today at 6:00pm sharp, I was ready to go to meet my friends in this little restaurant near Pudu Jail called Inner Mongolia where they serve Mongolian steamboat. However, I offered two colleagues Dg and Jt a ride to KLCC as it was on the way for me. Jt went to the toilet and we had to bloody wait 20 minutes for her to get out of the toilet. Later in the elevator down, she apologized and told us she actually had to take a dump and put on her make-up. Gross. Talk about too much information and being crude.

There was a massive jam due to the heavy rain this evening (bloody again!) and I was trapped in the car with Dg and Jt. Jt was proving to be very testing as she started screaming over the phone like a small kid. Irritating! Then she was transferring some calls here and there and her sister called where she proceeded to switch on the speaker phone and speak to her in that loud obnoxious volume. Bloody IRRITATING! I just looked at Dg and he returned the surrendering look. Thankfully 15 minutes later (she was still yakking away) we reached KLCC and they got out of the car. Then it was another 1.5 hours to the restaurant.

Dinner was great! There was plenty to eat. We ordered vegetables, pork, chicken, beef, mutton, mushrooms, and saliva chicken (literal translation from Chinese). Don't let the latter put you off, it's actually a very tasty dish! The gravy is fragant and had a very peanuty taste to it (I suspect it's sesame oil). The meat comes sliced paper-thin and are rolled up for presentation. We also ordered tofu and some werid noodle like dish.

During dinner, we were laughing and talking about old times. We also talked about how the company is faring now (bad apparently. I hope it shuts down.) and how much the bastard CEO earns per month. We had dessert later: sesame paste in glutinous balls and chunks of sweet potato encased with hardened maltose. Yum yum!

The damage came up to RM23.00 per person. Not too bad considering the amount of food we ordered!

Edit: Forgot to mention that Dl also brought his laptop to show us pictures of his wedding photos!

I score chocolate, again!

2006-08-26T00:50:00.000+08:00

Today was my last day of training. I managed to be the first to generate the required report for the exercise of the day and as a result, I scored myself a bar of mini Kit-Kat! Yay me!

I know. I love cheap thrills.

Meet Evan!

2006-08-25T00:56:00.000+08:00

Evan is a healthy 4 month old who resides in Penang. Isn't he adorable?

Random pix taken on the way to lunch today in the older parts of KL

2006-08-25T00:49:00.000+08:00

Taken with the Sony Ericsson S700i

Traffic jam again!

2006-08-25T00:31:00.000+08:00

Today, it had to rain when my training session was coming to an end. Grr, so irritating. Thankfully, the rain subsided when it was time to go.

Took the LRT back to the office to collect my car and go home. When I got out of the station. Cars were packed on the roads and none were moving. Wails!! I wanna go home!

I decided that it was futile and a tad bit embarassing to be stomping around in public while screaming "I wanna go home!". Instead I went back to my desk upstairs and began to clear off junk emails, respond to business emails and generate a daily report.

It was already 7:30pm and the condition of traffic remained the same. I joined B, A, E, Fc, S and KT for mamak to kill time where I had some toasted bread with kaya and butter, 1 glass of iced tea with lime and 1 glass of iced Horlicks. It was fun! We were gossiping about one of our colleagues and her *true love*, talked about movies and had more fun freaking Fc out (who has to work late tonight and is afraid of ghost stories) by telling ghost stories. This is a positive sign for me as I take it that I am assimilating well into the organization after three months.

At approximately 8:30pm, the volume of traffic began to dwindle indicating that it was time to get back to my desk to pack up and leave. Dilly-dallied for a bit and got home eventually at 10:00pm. Coincidentally, my dad and brother arrived home at the same time as me!

I am dead tired and quickly wolfed down my dinner (sans rice). Had a nice chat/bitch with my younger brother during dinner about someone and work. I quickly did the dishes and took a nice shower.

I hate, hate, hate traffic jams!

I scored a chocolate bar!

2006-08-25T00:08:00.000+08:00

During training today, we were told to create a report from raw data available for Angel the trainer. Whoever got the report out first wins 2 bars of snack-sized chocolate bars.

I managed to get the report out but in a more advanced way. When I presented my report to Angel (who wore a tight maroon shirt, tie and tight pants - you are right, Jf!) he said good but told me that I had to respect the pace of the other participants by using the SAS procedures he has taught the class so far. So I negotiated: "At the end of the day, it's the end-result that people really care". He thought for a while, laughed and let me pick one from his bag of chocolate bars!

I selected a Milkyway bar! ^_^ Check out my bounty in the photo above! Go me!

Training is such a bore

2006-08-24T00:49:00.000+08:00

This morning, traffic was fabulous! It's amazing how smooth traffic can be during the school holidays! Parked my car in my workplace and took an LRT to the training center.

Was training today a bore or what? Angel, the trainer, kept on detracting from the key points he was supposed to present and often I feel as if I want to bang my head on the wall to make him stop and go back to his main key points! When the theory of data warehouses and its contribution to the organization has been thorougly discussed (along with frequent irrelevant topics from Angel) came the hands-on part. But I know all of them already! Wails! The whole day was so unproductive. I hope tomorrow's session will be better.

Got back to the office after training via LRT that was packed with people many soaked in the heavy downpour in KL. I am thankful for my intuition to bring along an umbrella today or else I would have ended up like the soaked train passengers. All icky and wet.

Cleared my emails (83 of them, yo! But only 5 or 6 related to business) and was shocked to discover that outside, the traffic jam was terrible. So I chatted to Jf who was still working at 7:20ish. Decided to brave the traffic and managed to get home after 2 hours. Luckily I had enough petrol to get me back. It was dipping towards the "E" mark already. Stupid rain. Stupid traffic.

I am developing a cough. It's those wheezing dry cough. I must have gotten it from M. To make matters worse, I ate 2 handfuls of longans. They make the cough worse. Heh. I am so asking for it!

Angel is a Filipino trainer who wore a tight black pin-striped shirt, a red tie and tight black pin- striped pants. Ugh. Cannot tahan!

Low success ratio in photography

2006-08-22T23:34:00.000+08:00

After reviewing the 200 odd photos, I'd say only 20% are worth keeping! Sigh!

Away on training!

2006-08-22T23:02:00.000+08:00

I finished the dead people fuji apple (my fave) I took from the table in M's late grandma's house today and am ready to type my final post of the day.

Today I received a barrage (I exaggerated; there were only 5 calls) of calls from work. Mostly asking about where stuff were placed and some about confirmation on events that happened a few weeks ago. Then I start to wonder while I was driving, that I get these calls either because:

A) I forgot to followup and now business is in chaos because of me.
B) I'm important.

I'll go for A.

I will be away for training tomorrow at the dreaded Wisma Char Yong (Hate, hate, hate that place!) till Friday. This marks the longest I've been away from my work desk. I miss my desk. *Sniffles*

There was a birthday celebration for both Jf and Js who are August babies in the department today. I missed out on cake, drats!

From Penang

2006-08-22T22:33:00.000+08:00

I'm getting kinda lazy and crossed-eyed already. So I present my second day in Penang attending a funeral ceremony in point form:

- Woke up at 7:00am. Went back to sleep.
- Woke up at 7:15am. Grumbled, scratched head and went off to the toilet to brush up.
- Checked out of Northram, waitied 5 minutes to get my car parking ticket endorsed.
- No one was at the parking exit booth; the barrier was wide open. Sigh.
- Drove to M's late grandma's house again; arrived at 8:30am.
- Ate a hearty breakfast: porridge, stewed duck and heaps of salted vegetables.
- Guests and relatives arrive at bloody **9:30am**... (Could have gotten 1 more hour of sleep).
- Took photos of the remainder of the ceremony before the coffin was transferred to the hearse.
- The ceremonial walk by relatives and family began.
- Ran/waddled/jogged to be ahead of the ceremonial convoy to take photos.
- Went to the Hokkien Crematorium. Took the last batch of photos.
- Had lunch where two roasted pigs were gone in under 30 minutes. Made the mistake of sitting behind the butcher.
- One tired, sweaty, pork encrusted me grumbling in my mind all the way back to M's late grandma's house. Thankfully M got me a can of comforting Coke.
- Waited for M to finish her bath while munching on longans and a bowl of sweet soup with dried longans. When I was done with the soup, some one swiped my bunch of longans! Damn it.
- Got on the journey back to KL.
- Almost dozed off! Panicked! Stopped by rest stop to pick up some caffienated drink. Ended up with a curious can of RedBull.
- Had a gulp. Was wide awake. I don't know what did it, the ingredients or the HORRIBLE MEDICINAL TASTE! Bleech! First and last!
- Finally arrived in KL after braving heavy rain in certain stretches of the PLUS Highway.
- Dead tired!
- Dread journey back to Bkt Jelutong.
- Arrived at home. Deader tired!
- Took a shower and here I am blogging away in the grandeur of my laziness!

A Funeral Ceremony in Penang

2006-08-22T20:50:00.000+08:00

Yesterday morning, M and I went up north to the isle of Penang for her grandma's funeral ceremony. The start of the trip was slow, spent dilly-dallying on organizing what to take and what not to take for the trip. We took her mom's Matrix and it was on this trip I discovered the wonder of....cruise control! Man, this feature is so damned convenient, my feet can talk to each other! I mean, you know usually on a constant basis the left foot will need to alternate between the accelerator and brake pedals. But with cruise control, give your right-foot a rest! Free him up for other things, like...just sitting there. So happily harnessing the power of cruise control + my 10 hour power sleep. The drive up north was rather uneventful to say the least. Arrived at the bridge and began hotel hunting. Most of the hotels we tried in Georgetown had no more vacancies because of the school holidays. So in the end we ended checking in into Northram Suites. The suite was huge! It is entirely possible to smuggle an entire football squad into the suite!

I took a short rest, doing what I do best, flipping the TV channel till it was time to go to the funeral ceremony. When I found my way to M's grandma's house, I could not believe how narrow the entrance is! To make matters worse, there was no parking in the compound. I had to do a crazy tight 3-point turn to get out via the possibly narrowest little alley in Penang to park nearby some flats.

Her grandma's house is a little pocket of village lifestyle in urban Penang! There were chickens running about. Little patches of plants everywhere. Tall trees and what not. The houses there look as though they haven't been touched for decades! Of course new components have been infused to the architecture of these little structures, but the original is still very apparently, village-y. There was already a makeshift shed before the entrance to the house. When we got there, the ceremony already started and M's relatives, all dressed in customary black and white were kneeling while receiving the ritual. The Taoist master was reciting mantras in Hokkien and performing alot of hand gestures. His voice propagated in the little village by means of two makeshift speakers placed in front of the house and one more behind. So this is when my work starts. Fixing the lens on, I began to take photos of the ceremony. Which wasn't easy. Simply because this is my first time (amateur, lah!) taking photos during a funeral (and alot of other events/ceremonies too :p )! So after probably the 56th shot, I realised that most of the parts of the ceremony were actually done in repeating cycles. I realised that there was nothing much more to take and so I just sat down and looked around.

Dinner was served later. On the menu (I gave the name "dead people food") was "lam mee" (yellow noodles with prawns and slivers of pork in clear broth) and chicken curry with bread to dip the curry with and finally dessert: sweet soup with snow fungus. I polished them off as I was hungry but not starving yet. Chit chatted to M and her folks and realised that I have not seen my uni friend's 4 month old baby, Evan! I made plans with him and he agreed to pick me up.

Later on when I saw Evan, he is the cutest little thing ever! I mean sure babies are cute (some fugly) but this little guy is so adorable! Luckily he took after his mom, heh! He can do half flips when he's on the bed now. So clever huh? His dad is so protective. Here's why:

1. It's the Chinese Ghost Festival still, so he refuses to bring Evan out of the house.
2. Apparently, I smell of joss-sticks, incense and dead people.
3. His facial expression translated something close to "I don't trust you".
4. "Go make your own" was what he said to me.

I didn't get to carry the kid, but this convict was allowed to take photos instead. Hmmph.

Me, my ungrateful uni friend and his wife went to Starbucks in EGate for coffee. It was his treat because he just made manager. While enjoying my over-frothed latte, we chatted about other uni friends we knew and what they were doing. Of course there's bitching. Only in traces, I promise! Sensing that it's late already, I announced that they should drop me back at M's grandma's place and that they should sleep early, being parents already. But it was sure good catching up. It's just this amazing feeling that washes over you when you know your friend has a kid and being able to see his kid reinforces this feeling many times!

The ceremony ended soon after my return to the little village house. We made our goodbyes and I remember muttering some words until my ear caught the words "please be back here tomorrow at 8:30am...". Whoa! That means little sleep for me! *Wails*.

After getting lost in the night of Penang and subsequently discovering the path back to Northram. I took my shower and went to bed at 1:30am thinking before I slept that tomorrow will a long Tuesday.

Off to Penang

2006-08-21T08:36:00.000+08:00

I woke up feeling much like the Energizer Bunny after close to 10 hours of sleep this morning. Time to pack my stuff and head off to Penang to attend M's grandma's funeral. I've been given the task to document the funeral. Should be an interesting assignment.

I am thinking of subscribing to a new domain to host my new blog. Hmm...

More posts after Penang.

We Are Scientists is my Muse said Andy Williams

2006-08-20T16:02:00.000+08:00

I've been listening to alot of We Are Scientists and Muse lately. I think they rock. Currently on my repeat list is:

Worth the Wait - We Are Scientists
Nobody Move, Nobody Get Hurt - We Are Scientists
Supermassive Blackhole - Muse

I plan to get both their albums!

Last two weeks was Andy Williams week :D

"I love you baby and if it's quite alright, my pretty baby, trust in me when I say..."

Dinosaurs in a club and other thoughts

2006-08-20T15:34:00.000+08:00

Last night I went to Jf's birthday thing in a club in KL. First thing that hit me is that, I'm really too old for this. I was asked by Ek when was the last time I've been in one of these places. I could only answer with a grin and a scratch on my chin. Ek and Sy of course burst out laughing. Hey hey, you guys are a different species of dinosaurs, ok?

Ok, honestly, it's been almost 2 years ago. I think I remember the last place I went to was Frangipangi.

When I was at the entrance I had this slight apprehension. What was I supposed to do again? When all else fails, just follow people. Our little party was led down this pretty funky enclave that opens out into a small chamber. We were there early and had a few toasts to the birthday girl before people kept pouring. There was even a queue in the men's toilet much later. I heard someone retort while I was in the toilet "Fuck, this is the first: queuing up to take a piss!".

All the while here I am this outdated fella trying to talk to Jf's friend, erm, yes yes, F who was rather quiet as well. Ek kept saying how expired we are to be in places like this and so I replied: "You just have to blend in! What's important is that you are young at heart and what's MORE important is that you keep drinking to be extra friendly!".

Surprisingly, fighting back yawns in between my whisky sours, whisky+green tea, whisky coke and champagne, watching Jf "getting giddy with it" and having a good time, Sw getting picked up with the "I've seen you before, do you know so-and-so?" complete with wingman, and other beautiful people that night was kinda fun if not soothing. That's probably the alcohol talking. I've had quite alot to drink. I can remember being very chatty in Ek's car on the way to A&W much later for waffles, onion rings, deep fried chicken and root beer.

But with all good fun that night. I have one observation and would like to comment on the most obvious: being high/drunk has its pitfalls. People say things they don't mean or forget tomorrow. I've heard people say that when you are drunk, the alchohol somehow lifts the barrier that inhibits what your heart really wants to say and after the emotional floodgates have been opened all the trapped feelings gushing out of your heart. What I saw last night reminded me of what happened to a relationship with my ex last time. One fine day, I found out that she cheated on me after confessing when she broke under the pressure of guilt. Back then, still the naive little kid I was, I didn't think twice and forgave her immediately. Later on, I kinda sensed that she had something on with her housemate while in university. Then it was time that we went our separate ways. What I am trying to say is, after something bad has happened in a relationship. It can happen again and that you should be careful so you don't get burned again. BUT, then again who am I to judge what some people can do and can not do. I always believe that as long as what you are doing makes you happy, I've nothing much to say but to be happy for you also.

Got home at 5:30am. Phoebe gave me a little welcome snort when I got home. Yes, sorry I woke you from your sleep. I didn't sleep much, it was the alcohol and much going on on my mind. Woke up at 9:30am, been moping a bit here and there. Played a bit of PS2 to kill time.

I've decided to get up, quit moping and get productive! So I ate one valencia orange (which wasn't very sweet >.< ) and took a shower and started posting entries in my blog. I don't have much appetite today and am a little moody. Everything is a blur, thankfully my speech doesn't slur.

Also, I've had Japanese for meals 3 days in a row already! A bit scared now.

Sigh, this is such a draggy, moody, melancholy Sunday.

Short little packets of updates - part 2.

2006-08-20T15:11:00.000+08:00

Ok, no more distractions.

So since my last post circa March 06, so much has happened. Right after company T i joined company Th. Which didn't see me last long. The organisation was just too, incoherent and everything is just spread too thinly. Doesn't help that the Project Manager is useless. Most of the time the bank project I was in is managed by me and my dear team of VB programmers. Of course my drawn salary did not reflect this. So I'm doing more for less. Feel like some item they picked up during the Msian mega sales.

But with a little help from my friends, I managed to score an interview in a MNC financial institution in Malaysia, and here I am, part of their 1,000+ employee strong workforce and I'm loving every moment of it. There are processes, there is structure and most importantly it gives you satisfaction in what you do. No more unnecessary flying, no more meaningless work.

Most importantly, my colleagues are the best. Funny and friendly lot. Which is even more important.

Life is still same old: which is good! Some of my friends have shifted geographical locations, some are getting married and some are married to their work (attempting to organize a school teacher beauty pageant in Perlis etc; you know who you are!)

2006 has half expired and I feel that alot has transpired in this 1st half. Meeting new people, getting into TWO jobs (heh heh) subsequently, performing a totally new role in terms career and er, many other stuff.

Reevaluating myself, I've been told that I'm getting grumpier. Passive aggresive is the word. It's funny, because all the time I think I'm quite ok with people. I was also once told that the reason my ex-ex company put me in Bangkok for 3 weeks was to help gel the Thai employees there. To encourage them to work as a team, yada, yada, yada. Apparently, I have been told that I have a way with people. Mmm, but honestly I think I just do what is right and I guess what I do is right enough that people do not get hurt and stuff. Then again, people say alot of things.

I've booked a Myvi. Had quite enough of a small Kelisa. I am waiting anxiously for the day my sales person will call me up and say "your car is here". However, car sales people are a sly lot and often never mean what they say. So what to do? Wait.

I think that about summarizes what has happened to me so far. Ah, of course, forgot to mention that I've put on 1 kg. A product of over-eating and sheer laziness when it comes to exercise.

Short little packets of updates

2006-08-20T15:09:00.000+08:00

As I wrote the title for this entry, I just remembered that my wireless router sucks big time. Data packets keep getting lost! Boo hoo! I should get a better router but I am so lazy I just can't be bothered. Hmmph, sucks to be me.

I'm back!

2006-08-20T15:07:00.000+08:00

It's been such a long time since my last post. Well, I am back!

I am officially unemployed!

2006-02-25T10:17:00.000+08:00

That's right! And it feels good! And a little bad.

Good because I can finally leave my old company for good (I must say I was quite sarcastic, particularly to a specific someone while filling in my Exit Questionnaire form. However, I am sure they won't notice the sarcasm) and bad because I will not see my office gang at my new work place anymore. Ah well, but you can't have everything in life, right? Thus begins another chapter in my Book of Life.

I will be going to Lilycenario in PJ later with M's colleagues for lunch. Then head back to clean my toilet and get paper cups, plastic plates, plastic fork and knives for tonight's upcoming pot luck party at my place. Oh yeah, need to get toothpicks for the little sausages too!

Hello?

2006-02-22T00:13:00.000+08:00

Ding dong!

I've been AWOL for a pretty long time. So here's a quick update on what's been happening so far.

My December 2005 holiday mood was thoroughly destroyed by my great boss in my current company. I was posted in Bangkok for work (which I still think was highly unnecessary) on short notice. Thankfully, the pieces I managed to pickup was still rather enjoyable. December went something like this:

Bangkok -> KL for Christmas -> Bangkok -> KL for New Years -> Bangkok --> KL for wedding dinner --> Bangkok --> KL 2006.

Christmas 2005...er, can't remember! I need to check with M again and repost this.

New Year 2005/06 had a nice home cooked meal at M's (I cooked and she helped, of course, had sinful easy chocolate mousse for dessert, recipe courtesy of Ms Nigella Lawson) and watched TV at home. Sounds boring? Not so, I found it the best as I was with M and that's all I need.

Went for 6 wedding banquets in December and January. By the 5th banquet, it started to get really testing. The food, the crowd, the wait FOR the food.

Valentine's day was a simple affair this 2006. I got M flowers from Garden Fairies as she hinted for the flowers to be specifically from them. Went through some trouble to finally get my booking done. Personally, the flower selection and arrangement was nothing to shout about. I rushed home from work on V-day, thankfully there was no traffic jam, got to M's place and donned my cooking hat. For dinner she had tender lamb cutlets, medium done and I had pan fried chicken. She prepared her insalada with rocket and basil topped with a basil and shallot dressing. Oh ya, forgot those little cheese ball thingys (boccochini?). I prepared roasted vegetables.

*Fast forward to this week...

On Sunday I went for an expensive trip to the car mechanics for what was origninally intended for a small job slowly escalated to many more hidden problems with the car. There goes my budget for a Nintendo DS Lite. To maximise time, M and I went to the salon to get myself a much needed haircut and she pampered herself with hair treatment. My favourite stylist is Karen. She's nice, pretty skilled at cutting hair and most importantly does not pester you to buy hair products. Later I went for lunch at this dim sum place in Paramount, PJ with WS, WL and M. We presented WL's birthday present later, which was a powerful LED flash light that the special forces use, according to the packaging.

The biggest news so far is probably me getting a new job. Thank goodness. No more config bullshit. And taking bullshit from inexperienced managers. As I write this, it will be my last week in my current company. I can't wait till the coming Friday for past 6pm on that day, I will be officially bearing the "ex-employee" title. This week has been rather pleasant so far, doing mindless work. I've got a workshop to conduct as well. Whoop-dee-doo!

Also, I've gotten a small windfall from the company. Don't expect free meals ;) I've already got a date with some banks I owe money to. I will be debt free pretty soon. I need to watch my expenses very, very closely this time around.

It still sucks that the Perodua Myvi still has a rediculously long waiting period of 8 months on average.

My Mom is looking for a new car. She kinda likes the Kia Picanto, but I told her, "Ma, for that price, you can get a Myvi that offers more features than the Picanto has to offer in every department. And you get money change back too". In which she replied, "But Myvi waiting period, ah, is 8 months you know?"

Aiya...

Happy New Year!

2006-01-01T11:21:00.000+08:00

It's finally 2006. Always when I realise that there are 2 hours of the old year left, I will exclaim "It's already one year! So fast!". M and I didn't do much this New Year, we went to a New Year Eve lunch at her ex-colleagues place that was filled with many senior people in the IT industry. Oh, we also went to Ikano to get some rabbit food, already the roads were cordoned off for the New Year fireworks display. When we got home, we made dessert for later and cooked dinner later followed by watching TV together till the new year. At my age, I think I can't be bothered with packed crowds and traffic jam anymore. So I thought my New Year with M, allthough simple, nothing extravagant, was a nice enough evening to transition the old year to the new year. After all, I think what matters most is the ones you are with.

So, a year has gone by. I think 2005 started off to a good start. Work was still OK. Hmm, come to think of it, the only gripes I have with 2005 is just work. Financially, romantically, emotionally everything is fine. I still had friends around me, at work or out of work to help me get by this year. I have M too. All of you to let me know that I am not alone. Again, for me, work took a tumbling in mid 2005 when there was a shift in management styles. Everything went downhill from there. The desperation, the helplessness and the feeling of being lost without guidance in my career. The end of 2005 was just horrible. My holiday season was completely disrupted thanks to work. Good things will come, hopefully in 2006! I hope I can afford a Myvi in this new year, a new job and to advance from a career perspective. Also, to maintain, respect my friends and make new ones. I have no New Year resolutions, I never have them for the longest time. I think as long as I do not cause hurt, harm and grief to myself, friends and society that will be sufficient.

Christmas went by quickly too! With me flight back and forth KL and Bangkok, it makes time in KL past by even quicker. On Christmas eve, M organized a small get together for my close friends at my place. Sometimes I think they will think that they will need their passports when they visit me. I stay kinda far from the PJ central area now. I suppose it's not as bad as travelling from PJ to Bandar Sungai Long in Cheras. Nyeh! I made some finger food (too much again as usual). WS prepared excellent sirloin steak cutlets, SY and E brough tons of tortilla chips, chicken wings, chicken fingers and egg rolls from Chillis, WL brough 70 sticks of assorted satay from that popular Kajang place (they have a branch in DU I am told) and grill stingray, M prepared her lovely salad with balsamic vinegar and grilled haloumi cheese and my mom cooked some tom yam noodles. All this to feed 6 people. We did not even finish 50% of the food. They ended up being leftover dinners for myself and my family. They still tasted good nonetheless! Everyone had a good time, eating dinner while watching Jaime Oliver on TV. Such gluttons we are! We adjourned to a game of Dungeoneer which lasted till 4am in the morning. After that we made our Christmas greetings to everyone and said our good byes. That was a good Christmas eve event :)

Ok, I'm going to end this entry here and make something to eat.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Pizza Uno

2005-12-31T02:11:00.000+08:00

Before I write any more, I had a bad impression of Pizza Uno previouslly. The food then was mediocre, the service horrible because the food were coming out of order! Mains arrived before appetizers, why call them appetizers then? Anyway here is the rest of the entry.

About a moon ago, M and I decided to grab a bite in Pizza Uno in Centrepoint, Bandar Utama after failing to get a parking space in 1 Utama. She hasn't eaten the whole day and it was almost 5pm.

There wasn't many patrons yet, just our table, 2 more couples and 2 families that were seated moments later. I wasn't feeling hungry, so I ordered Strawberry Cheesecake and a glass of Affogato (this is where the craving started) and M had Spaghetti with Prawns. So far the service was pretty ok, except that the guy who took our order was like Sgt. Slaughter, repeating our order in his authoritative tone. Overall, service was rather pleasant throughout the whole dining experience.

The food didn't take long to arrive. My Strawberry Cheese Cake arrived together with the glass of Affogato I ordered. M's pasta arrived immediately after mine, I observed huge prawns on the bed of spaghetti!

M immediately started work , deshelling the prawns and eating her pasta. I tried some and it was, surprisingly, pretty good. The olive oil was sufficient to make the spaghetti moist and tasty. The prawns were char-grilled and generous in quantity. Most importantly they tasted fresh! A simple dish but a delicious one nonetheless.

My cheese cake was actually mock cheesecake, in a way I suppose. It was cream cheese served on a layer of crushed graham crackers in a small baking dish (doh! I forgot the proper name for it) with strawberry coulis. It tasted pretty good! The cheese didn't taste crumbly, it was smooth and creamy and cheesy(!). The strawberry coulis accompanied the mock cheese cake with almost perfect harmony. The Affogato was great too. Using a tea spoon to blend in the vanilla ice-cream (I can just imagine it if the ice-cream used was made with real vanilla beans, mmm...) with the shot of espresso, I then continued to enjoy sips of coffee bliss - a cool, perky, creamy mixture of sweetness and bitterness in every sip. Well, it got really cold and sweet towards the end of the drink, but what the heck, I've got a sweet-tooth.

Feeling satiated and now wanting dessert, M ordered a serve of Sticky Date Pudding of which I had the "honour" to eat most of it. It was served with generous amounts of caramel sauce and a scoop of vanilla ice-cream. Mm, this one didn't quite do it for me, the dates were too finely processed making the pudding lose its texture. The pudding itself wasn'y moist enough. The caramel sauce was straight off a bottle, you could some how taste it and arrive at this conclusion. Well, it's not that bad, edible if you like your sticky date pudding dry. M was trying to compare this to the sticky date pudding in Marmalade Pantry in Singapore. BThat would be comparing the same food yes, but of totally different grade and class.

This recent visit on a lazy Sunday to Pizza Uno has discarded my old perception of mediocre food quality and bad service. Prices are not too bad, but could be slightly cheaper. Pastas range from RM18 - RM30, I can't remember the prices for the pizza though. Would I dine at Pizza Uno again? I would say, yes. The next time to probably try the pizza.

Even rabbits chill out

2005-12-31T01:49:00.000+08:00

A rare photo of my rabbit Bunny relaxing on her sides. Usually, she'll be on her tummy.

Singaporean Mee Siam anyone?

2005-12-31T01:02:00.000+08:00

I've had Singaporean mee siam a month ago. My Mom who is Singaporean makes the best mee siam I've ever tasted. I've grown up with this version of mee siam that I find the local mee siam in Malaysia, inferior, bland and unappetizing. Apologies, but it's true.

If you haven't had Singaporean mee siam before, here are the main ingredients you will find in a typical serve. Cubes of tau pok (dried puffy bean curd), tau kua (dried bean curd cake), chopped chives, slices of hard boiled eggs, slightly sweet sambal prawns on a bed of rice vermicelli lightly coated with chilli paste. Ladle in the assam broth, and add a squeeze of lime and you are ready for delicious Singaporean mee siam!

It's a dish that is easy to make. Just takes time to cut and prepare the ingredients. I have always wondered why didn't I learn to prepare it from my Mom. Hmm, I must convince her to make it again. This time, I'll be taking notes.

* No lah! Not advertising for my Mom. She doesn't sell mee siam.

Sawasdee krap

2005-12-31T00:27:00.000+08:00

Today marks the second week that I have been in Bangkok. Work has been tremendously crazy. I’ve been brain dumping for an analysis on the customer’s requirements for the second time around. It needs to be redesigned, apparently, at this late stage of the project. I’m just going with the flow, to dump whatever functional knowledge I have onto documents so that I can transition off the project. Well what can I say? I am very certain that my current project manager is incompetent and is short sighted. I can vouch for my colleagues that have worked for him before in prior projects. Kind people whom I have confided about my current predicament often tell me to hang in there, better opportunities will come and that you will need to be patient until you are off the project and that there will always be something good in the bad you are currently in. Well it’s true what their advice is to me. I have made friends with two new Thai colleagues in the office who are dedicated to their work. One is a real joker; always teaching me the negative versions of Thai words instead of the decent version, the other is a quiet, soft spoken girl whose talent lie not in her speech, but in her expertise in programming. I’ve also regained touched with real work, the need to be on the ball, having arguments and arriving to resolutions, always needing to dispense knowledge when required in the shortest of time. For time wasn’t a luxury I had the moment I stepped into the Bangkok office two weeks ago. It’s a good feeling nevertheless, despite the bad project management and ridiculous timeline. I remember posting an entry in this blog stating that I may have gone numb and limp from not doing any work. So this entry will probably answer to that entry, or something to the likes of that.

Now, soppy stuff aside! Two weeks in Bangkok and the main focus was the culinary delights! There’s always food to be found, at any time, any place. You can find skewers of BBQ marinated pork in sweet sauce (costs only 50 baht per skewer), little push carts full of sweet looking fruits (big bag of juicy jambu air for 10 baht!), road side stalls selling noodles from their carts with steam gently flowing from the big pot of hot soup, som tum, tom yam goong (prawns)/kai (chicken)/pla (fish), the list goes on! My breakfast in Bangkok during workdays become a more tasty affair than in boring Mont Kiara. You can find delicious sandwiches, tasty pastries from bakeries, steamed sweet corn, little wantons, fried chicken wings, fried pork in garlic with sticky rice, omelets, freshly made soya bean milk, buns, ultra-sweet coffee (that hits you in the head much later), strong coffee iced latte (that really isn’t latte, they just add like a few drops of milk, but this icy caffeinated beverage hits you in the head immediately), and probably a lot more. Food is good and cheap! Cheep, cheep! It’s pretty easy to get food if you are able to point and try to communicate. It also helps if they have a menu in English! However, I suspect that if you really ordered using the “farang” menu, you probably pay slightly more.

On the plane to KL today, I sat next to this very, very, I stress, VERY DODGY man. He was overly friendly, very inquisitive and talking to me only in Cantonese. So I patronized him, not knowing that upon closer observation, he had runes etched on the skin of both his arms, they were still fresh as the blood clot was still visible. Then I notice that he keeps clutching on a small sling bag. Later, what I saw sent chills down my spine. He pulled up a bottle filled with dark liquid with something stuffed in it, and motioned it in his hands as though as a sign of respect. Then he pulled out another bottle! Creepy! He was a typical Chinapek (picks his nose in plain sight with his pinkie) that hasn't embraced technology yet. He was so curious when he saw another passenger's Apple Powerbook and was surprised that it could operate without a powercable. I had to explain to him that the laptop has an internal battery, like that of a mobile phone. Ok. I'm going to stop describing my 2 hour experience with this man. It's very creepy.

Well, on Tuesday, I’m going back to Bangkok, for 2 more foreseeable hectic weeks. Hopefully, come mid-January, I can transition off!

Junk in my phone

2005-12-16T00:26:00.000+08:00

Ah yes, as I was going through the downloaded photos taken with my camera phone. I realise that there are lots of photos that I have completely forgotten about. I will put up short posts about them soon. Particularly about Pizza Uno where M and I went to have a late lunch last Sunday.

Adventures in retail land

2005-12-15T23:39:00.000+08:00

Today I took a day off to get away from the mundaneness of work.

I accompanied M to her dentist appointment. We were late, but still made it for her dental checkup anyway. After 30 minutes of flipping through a copy of EVO in the dentist's, we made a beehive for 1 Utama. M wanted to do her Christmas shopping there. Driving towards the underground carpark, I spotted a snowman waving at me from the top of the new wing of 1 Utama. Check out Mr Snowman below.

If you think there's no one in 1 Utama on a weekday, think again. The mall was PACKED with people! Young kids, college kids, working people, grandmas and grandpas can be seen everywhere!

We parked at 12:40pm and I got hungry and was craving for pasta. I decided to go to either Bakerzin or Ms Read's Delicious in the new wing. The menu at Bakerzin didn't look inviting, so we ended up at Delicious instead. The new decor is fantastic. Very warm and cozy. Spacious too!

We got the attention of a waitress and she took our order. I ordered a plate of Spaghetti Carbonara and a glass of Affogato. M had Spicy Seafood Spaghetti. We ordered a share of Garden Salad as well. When the waitress finished taking our order, I noticed that more and more people were trickling into the restaurant. Delicious certainly has good business during the lunch time, even on a weekday. I observed many waiters and waitresses on shift however I think the restaurant is over-staffed. About 4 of them were constantly idling. It made a portion of the restaurant very congested. The ventilation system wasn't working very well too, the spot lights made it warm and stuffy.

Moments later, my Affogato came which was divine; espresso and a generous scoop of vanilla ice-cream. Perfect!

This was followed by the Garden Salad with a mild spicy dressing with strong hints of garlic. The leaves of salad were crisp and fresh.

Carbonara came next and it was delicious (maybe I was really hungry then, huh?), the cream sauce had a good consistency, not too runny or too dry. Too bad the bacon bits were of beef origin.

M's Seafood spaghetti was not too bad, I thought that it was not salty enough however. We got the bill and was on our way for a retail adventure on a Thursday afternoon.

M went to do her shopping while I was checking out the pots and pans in the kitchen department in Parkson-U. Then the hardware section followed by the toys. Man, toys are so advanced now. Kids are so lucky. But then kids nowadays play Pokemon and Magic trading card games and video games. Lucky buggers...when I was young, bla bla bla...

Then we went to several boutiques, BCBG, Zara and MNG which by the way, has a sale going on. Crazy, so many girls in there, shopping and hoarding article of clothes as if they were free. We hit a couple more boutiques like Warehouse and a few others. I hereby officially conclude that most women clothes are crazy expensive. :p

The rest of the day went by in a daze. The pet shop, the shoe shop and others that I cannot remember. Oh yeah, there's Thann, a beauty boutique selling massage oils and other health knick-knacks. I remember the store owner being very chirpy and attentive. Courtyards with Christmas ornaments and gift items for sale were investigated by us as well. I got to listen to a cool chillout tune in one of the stores near the Baazaar selling hip-hop wear that had a foosball machine in it. Sigh, looking at all these people's dressing reminds myself of my boring waredrobe. Got to upgrade soon, but only after I pass my career instability period. Raincheck, raincheck.

I was carrying bags of goods for the longest time. My energy reserves were depleting quickly. M sensing that I was irritable already, suggested that we stop for tea. This was around 6:00pm-ish. We ended up in Delicious again. I was craving for another glass of Affogato. Bakerzin doesn't serve Affogato, pah! M had a vanilla milkshake that I am sure tasted good because she finished it pretty quickly.

We also ordered a serve of Sticky Date Pudding that came topped with hot butterscotch sauce and a scoop of coconut ice-cream.

It was not too bad, however it was quite devoid of chunky pieces of dates, just the way I like them. The butterscotch sauce was delish! The coconut ice-cream blends in well with the pudding and sauce. M had a little chat with Ben, the cook (who now only manages) about Sticky Date Puddings and Marmalade Pantry in Singapore. Apparently, he's working on improving the recipe for the pudding. After my last sip of heavenly Affogato, we walked around for a little while more and headed for home.

M picked up dinner for herself and we said our goodbyes and I went home. Man, this day is crazy. I've forgotten how tiring it was to go shopping with a girl on a full day. Ah, forgot to mention as well. We left 1 Utama at 7:40pm and our parking fee came up to RM5.00 (stupid machine decided to give me change in 10 x 50c coins....bugger.).

Came home to a small dinner of take-away claypot chicken rice and settled down while watching Kung Fu Hustle.

A tiring day indeed, but if compared with WORK, specifically, WORK in the current company I am working for, having adventures in retail land is way better!

Pictures of my bounty!

2005-12-07T22:02:00.000+08:00

Here are pictures of my birthday bounty.

That's my new Marimekko messenger bag that I will keep and will only use when I get my new job. I refuse to let it absorb negative chi/karma/energy at my current office.

That's the pack of Dungeoneer cards my siblings got for me ^_^

I did not take pictures of the cake because I am lazy.

Birthday bounty!

2005-12-05T23:27:00.000+08:00

Yesterday I got a surprise birthday present from my brother and sister. 1 spanking, brand new deck of Dungeoneer. They got me the Den of the Wererats deck. Whuzzah! Now I have 3 decks! Tomb of the Lich Lord, The Haunted Woods of Malthorin and Den of the Wererats!

My parents bought me dinner at Bar-B-Q and a nice Banana Split cake from La Manilla. I will need to take a picture of the cake before it runs out. Or, I could buy a slice from the bakery again and take pictures of it, but that would be cheating.

Lastly, I got today a navy blue Olkalaukku Marimekko bag from my friends and M! Whooo it looks great guys! I regretted after returning from my lastest trip to Singapore that I did not buy the bag from Prints. It's made in Finland, not China, myehhhh!

Thanks to all for the lovely presents, dinner and well wishes, you know who you are! ;)

It's late now and I will try to post pictures of my bounty tomorrow.

Milly

2005-12-05T23:07:00.000+08:00

I've recently adopted a Roborovski hamster from M's colleague. I was down with flu on the day I was supposed to bring him back from work, so instead, I got my brother to bring it home for me. The little guy is tiny! Tiny, tiny!

On the first day, he was really nervous, shying away in the toilet roll most of the time. He scurries to safety the minute he senses something larger (me) approaching. Which makes it quite hard to bond with. Anyway, I picked him up by cornering him in the cage and already he was struggling to run off from my palm! After a couple of minutes I put him back in the cage as not to stress the little guy too much. I will try again the following day.

It's been 5 days since he's been in my room. He's been less afraid of my fingers when he's on my palm, more relaxed. But he still scurries away when something large approaches. Hopefully over time, he will be more relaxed and not run away so much!

I am planning to buy him a small exercise ball, heh heh.

I took the pix above from M as I was lazy to edit my own version of Milly's pictures. M's SLR takes better photos anyway.

Last week of November

2005-11-30T13:34:00.000+08:00

This Sunday, we celebrated WS's birthday by treating him a dinner at Checkers that serve non-halal food. For the sake of his birthday, I will not elaborate on how pretentious, biased and expensive this restaurant is. Bad service and expensive food that I can cook better.

Before that, me, BY and LL went down to Ikea to get him his birthday present. At first it was book vouchers from Kino, or, a KLPac Friend's membership (which I found out after calling, they did not start this programme yet). Since he's running out of storage space, what woul d be better than a CD tower! With BY's help, I popped it into M's mom's car (which was long enough to fit the furniture) and surprised WS later on Sunday. We unpacked the pieces from the box and bergotong-royong to assemble it. It was good fun and laughter can be heard in the air.

I have been invited to 4 weddings, the bulk of them scheduled in mid-December and one in January. Out of 4 I've decided to skip one due to personal reasons. Wow, these things are gonna cost me!

Also, I have caught the flu and am resting at home. The meds are helping, but I think taking a nap in the hot afternoon has given me a slight headache. Thank goodness I've woken up on time, it'll be bad if the headache were to be full-blown!

I am hungry now, and mommy has prepared some macaroni in clear soup. Yum, yum!

Also, I will soon be adopting a little Roborovski hamster from M's colleague. It's a boy. Suggestions for a name anyone? I was thinking Milly, until M reminded me that the hamster is a boy.

Masak-masak

2005-11-26T03:24:00.000+08:00

I am trying to recall if I played masak-masak when I was a kid. Nope, can't recall.

Anyway, I would like to share this blog I recently discovered while randomly seaching for something (I can't remember, I have bad memory) on Google. It's called "Masak-masak" and is owned and maintained by boo_licious. I'm going to link her/him(?) here. It's about food reviews in the Klang Valley, and possibly outside the Klang Valley. I am not sure.

What I like about boo_licious is that he/she takes photos of food every where! As for me, I feel so self-conscious when I take photos in restaurant or kopitiam. I get paranoid and think people are staring at me. Ugh. Give Masak-Masak a read, it's pretty cool!

Ze link ist zere: http://masak-masak.blogspot.com

According to boo_licious, Beard Papa is opening in Mid Valley Megamall. Picking my brain, I recall spotting this shop in Takashimaya, Singapore. They sell pastries and specialises in cream puffs (or was it only cream puffs? Hmm..!)! Yum!

Aside: I notice alot of Singaporean food franchises opening in Malaysia. Of that I know of is Bakerzin (come on Canelle, I'm waiting for you!), Killiney Kopitiam, one famous Singaporean Hainanese chicken rice shop in SS2 and now Beard Papa. If The Brownie Factory lands in KL, M will be most pleased. So many Singaporean owned food businesses are mushrooming here in KL (Bakerzin is expanding in 1 Utama) and where do we, Malaysian food entrepreneurs stand? Educate me if I am wrong, but we have none of our local food out there huh? Oh wait, I remember a Thai colleague telling me about a good Hainanese chicken rice franchise in NYC, USA. I wonder if that is Malaysian? My point is, Singapore is invading us! We should invade them back with our own culinary soldiers!

I'm almost better than a zombie

2005-11-26T03:10:00.000+08:00

A day after getting the Streamyx service at home, I needed to complete the network infrastructure in my home. My sister's PC was the only one not on the network yet. After installing the LAN card into her PC, I connected her LAN cable into the WiFi router only to realise that it crashes the router everytime her machine is plugged in. Gah!! Viruses! This is the work of viruses! Not wanting to waste my remaining hours before Thursday ends, I told her to start backing up her important files and FORMAT the damn thing. And format it good I did. The whole process took nearly 2 hours. To while away the time, I played a round of Dungeoneer with my brother and sister (who are pretty ruthless at it now). The installation of Windows and a quick test to ensure that she can connect to the router without killing it ended at roughly 2am. The game of Dungeoneer was not finished, but it had to end. There's work tomorrow!

Friday came, and I was deprived of sleep. Which meant I was gumpier than a zombie who's lost his legs.

I accompanied poor M who has officially lost her voice (and could only communicate via Morse code) in a clinic in Sri Hartamas. It was as though the whole community decided to get sick this morning. The wait was so long! more than 30 mins!

Work wasn't so great. I've already sunk so low that I've lost the objective of doing my daily tasks for the project I'm currently on. It doesn't help that I'm the only one doing most of the documentation. It becomes aggravating knowing that the deadline is set so recidulously short with the amount of resources available. This project is doomed. From the start, it is doomed.

Trying to make sense of bizarre data mapping relationships drains alot of my already tired mind. When the office ended, I was grumpier that a zombie without legs AND arms.

Went back to M's and pottered about. I learnt that MY met with a car accident near 1 Utama. Good thing she's ok, her car suffered though.

I came back home, I noticed haze. Some idiot is burning stuff nearby and from the smell of the air, some plastic was on fire! Damn, damn, damn these idiots! I played a good hour of Need For Speed: Most Wanted on the XBox. Whoa! That felt good! Then I hit the shower and on to the INTERNET. It's good to be connected.

See beh tired now!

Beep! First post from home!

2005-11-23T22:03:00.000+08:00

Finally! This is a very first post from me from the comforts of home via BROADBAND!

I have officially moved one notch from the Dark Ages to the Broadband Age. Whoohoo!

Nintendo DS spotted!

2005-11-18T15:50:00.000+08:00

I was walking into the other room in the office as a collections officer for lunch. He was a though customer, but I got what I went there for (by using blackmail if you really wanted to know).

That aside, I spotted a sleek black Nintendo DS device on the software manager's desk. I helped myself and had a feel of it. Whoa, it's heavy! The PSP is lighter. And the screen's nice a big. The unit is nicely designed that it fits into your hands nicely, not cramp like the Nintendo GBA SP. Probably designed for an adult's pair of hands. I wonder if he has a copy of Nintendogs? ^_^

UPDATE: JK the Software Manager was nice enough to give a practical demo of Nintendogs on his NDS. The pug, Kachang, listens to commands and obeys! You can take your virtual dogs to walks and give them baths! Cute!

Office Boredom: Take One!

2005-11-17T18:13:00.000+08:00

Today, after churning out boring user requirements at work, I struck a conversation with RS of which the transcript I have posted here for your viewing pleasure (and amusement, hopefully).

Me:u think i what?
RS:i think u my friend lor
Me:i think u think i am kari kepala ikan lor
RS:wah... sedap
RS:i want
Me:eat lah
Me:outside got
RS:mana
RS:btw me also hungry liao
Me:nehhhh the market mah
Me:hungry? wtf
Me:so fast
Me:not even 5 leh
RS:lunch eat noodle damm teruk one
Me:is it?
Me:next time eat see ham la
Me:wai until dowan hungry liao
Me:or the ghost will lay eggs tim
RS:whats with ghost lay eggs got to do with si ham
Me:got la
Me:the celestial bridge mah
Me:last time the american indians believe that eating see ham can communicate with ghost
Me:then the ghost will lay eggs
Me:inside the egg got mesej and toy wan
RS:hahahahahha
RS:where u heard that rubbish one
Me:on ch 50
Me:discovery lah
RS:they tipu u la
Me:is it?!
Me:shit
Me:where can
RS:can la
RS:coz u tak perasan mah
Me:damn i so blur meh?
RS:u not blur
RS:bt u damm kau blur
Me:so desu ne

It's amazing the amount of BS I can churn out when I am bored. Poo-eeh!

Coffee woes

2005-11-15T14:55:00.000+08:00

It's only Tuesday and I just finished lunch in the MK foodcourt where I had, after a long time, chicken rice wihch I was still laced with MSG. Lots of it.

I then proceeded to the supermarket to pick a drink (like ritual during my earlier months working here) with my fellow colleagues. So after walking up and down the row of refrigerators that kept the cans of drinks cold, I decided to get iced coffee for my picker-upper. I opened the door and reached for a can of Pokka coffee. Problem was there were three to choose from. One I managed to remove from the pool of possible coffee to purchase. The other two, whoa, tricky! I had to choose between Real Brewed Coffee and Milk Coffee. So I though, Real Brewed Coffee would mean...something that was opposed to Artificial Brewed Coffee?

I ended up with the Milk Coffee and it tasted pretty darn good.

The Girl From Ipoh

2005-11-14T15:11:00.000+08:00

I've reminded myself to prepare a cup of coffee which wasn't thick before writing this. Otherwise, I'll get headaches for the whole morning

Carmen Soo (^_^)

Last Saturday I caught a play with the title "The Girl From Ipoh" which was written and directed by Low Ngai Yuen. Venue was at KLPAC. The main actors are Carmen Soo (^_^) who plays the alter identity of Wong May Lee and Season Chee who plays the Boyfriend and Tony Eusoff who plays the guy at the hor fun stall. Great performance from the Lit Performers, an established company specialising in acapella as well as Lee Swee Keong who plays Wong May Lee's father. The Lit Performers played the role of Wong May Lee's conscience, singing songs that reflected her emotions. They also translate the bits of the play that was entirely in Cantonese to those who don't understand the language in a rather amusing way.

I will put a quick summary of my impression of the play. The Girl From Ipoh tells a story about acknowledging our ethnicity. When are we Chinese enough or not enough? It starts with a monologue from Wong May Lee about how she grew up in a very traditional family. Her father is a hard worker who sells hor fun and wishes to make sure his daughter doesn't end up him, leading a life of hard labour. She was put in a Kebangsaan school and cannot speak much Cantonese. With that mindset (confused, I would say), she decided that she did not want to be a Chinese anymore. When she was old enough, she went over to KL, living a very pretentious life and started looking for love. She soon met the Boyfriend and he moved in with her. However, the Boyfriend is very selfish and dominating but she doesn't see it as such, instead she inteprets it as love because to her, love is imperfect. The relationship soon became complicated and didn't last and to deal another blow to her, she found out that she was pregnant. Not knowing where to go, she decided to head home for Ipoh, to face her father and break the bad news to him in when he was having dinner.

Of course, he immediately broke into anger. Which father wouldn't? I really thought Lee Swee Keong's acting was superb. His expression of anger was controled, you can really feel as an audience the disappointment he feels towards his daughter. He voices his anger in Cantonese which had a very unique accent to it. That was the scene I loved most in The Girl From Ipoh. I could feel the tension from the silence after the barrage of words from him. I wouldn't want to be Wong May Lee at that moment! Being a father, he saw past the baby in her womb and accepted her again. In the most moving scene in the play probably was when daughter served food to father after her acceptance.

She did not repent in the ending of the play and went back to KL to lead her pretentious life. The good part in the story is that she had a miscarriage (how convenient :p) and did not have to worry about a baby. To finally wrap the play up, the real Wong May Lee, a less physically attractive woman appeared and told the audience that the alter Wong May Lee's stories were all tragic! The real Wong May Lee did not really bother about her apperance and would live life as it should be. I tought that was a good twist in the end of this play.

There was a special performance by the Lit Performers and that's when the actors and actresses bowed to the audience to take their credit. People were clapping, particularly loud claps from Ipoh-nites present that night (can get discounted tickets if you can prove you hail from Ipoh!). The final song was really cheerful and lively.

I thought that the acapella bit was great and all, don't get me wrong, they were wonderful! Powerful voices across many vocal ranges and improvising by infusing local elements in contemporary pop music (Don't Cha by The Pussy Cat Dolls as an example) but some scenes when they were singing didn't really gel. I found them distracting at certain scenes. I had to focus on the main actors on the stage and on the acapella band as well. Which one to focus on? Most of the time, the actors were not doing anything in the background as well, just sitting there. At first I thought that Carmen's costumes especially the exaggerated chiffon evening dress was absolutely silly. She had it on for the remainder of Act 2. But after having a chat with WS on the way home, Low Ngai Yuen may have intentionally made it a point, to show just how far the other Wong May Lee is willing to go to leave her ehtnicity behind. And I think it works in hindsight. All in all, I thought Carmen Soo's second attempt in theatre was not too bad in The Girl From Ipoh. Except that she may have overdone her role a little. Lee Swee Keong and the Lit Performers were excellent. Tony Eusoff was entertaining and Season Chee was doing very well as the "bastard" Boyfriend. I would rate The Girl from Ipoh above average. The Odd Couple was still better.

It makes you think, that there are indeed people with this mentality living amongst us here in Malaysia, where they do not acknowledge themselves as who they really are. Their real identity is behind a curtain of white lies. We are embracing the Western culture more and more, that is true, but that does not mean you leave your roots behind. Malaysia boleh, yes?

I spotted posters for a new production from Joe Hasham entitled Julius Caesar. I think I am interested to watch this. I would like to experience a play that had a serious (or classic) theme and discover for myself if I would enjoy it.

Malaysian Police Force Against Graft and other views.

2005-11-10T11:23:00.000+08:00

Just today I found out that the Malaysian Police force is going against graft. To do so, they will wear a white button with the words "Saya ANTI Rasuah" which literally means, I am anti graft. I think it's funny that they have to use this to combat graft. The only reason why graft works, is because, we the citizens encourage it to happen. They for it, we willingly comply. They get used to it and it becomes what it is now, a disgrace. So really, personally, I feel that besides the cops who must hold their authority and responsibility with respect, the citizen of Malaysia too must play a part to combat graft, if they stop bribing, they will not ask for it sooner or later. Here's a link to an article on this topic in The Star.

Samy Vellu wants experienced bus drivers. Most politicians in Malaysia always talk about glorious dreams and wants in public. But do they do anything about it? No. Usually it's just all talk and empty promises. You can talk till the cows come home, but until you actively do something about it and stop bitching about everything else that's happening (relevant or irrelevant) and have debates on why you are under priviledged in society, it will never happen.

3 bombs went off in Jordan in foreign owned hotels in almost perfect synchronicity. Why is it that the way to make a point is by killing, doesn't that make you a hypocrite? Is death the way to prove an ideal? No life is worth sacrificing for any one man's ideals. So very sad.

Am I losing my edge?

2005-11-09T11:22:00.000+08:00

After some time working in this current company, I've been on a wild ride and the company has begun its steady decline once again into decay and oblivion. I notice myself not doing as much as I should everyday. It's as if, I am only here to while away the time and take my salary home at the end of the month. I will summarise this as a heavy injection of de-motivation caused by management in the company. Good people leaving, politics in play and other factors you'd expect in a work environment, but only much worse.

I believe I used to be sharp, aggresive and quick in doing things. Now, I'm spending most of my time idling and looking at websites instead. I believe I am becoming numb and losing my edge and vigor at work. If this goes on longer, I am afraid that I may get so comfortable with the status quo that I may find it very hard to get back to my previous state, to rise to the occasion, when required.

In that, I believe, it's time to leave this worthless place, hopefully in time before it self-destructs!

November already

2005-11-08T11:05:00.000+08:00

Dang, looking back at my posts, they look very fragmented, little bits of experiences and thoughts here and there. I will try to fill in the gaps soon.

October 2005 proved to be a very eventful month however not all the events are directly related to me. Will post a short summary on what happened in October soon.

Biggest news is that I got two new games! One a card based RPG game called Dungeoneerwhich is designed by Thomas Denmark (the dude conceptualised the game, designed the game mechanics and published the cards all by himself before being taken over my Atlas-Games). I am the proud owner of the Tomb Of The Lich Lord set, where Undead monsters roam the dungeons. Good thing with it is that it's all you need to play with one deck, which is very different to CCG out there such as Magic The Gathering and Pokemon as the popular ones. The game can accomodate 2 to 4 players and once you can get around the complex (not complex really, but badly presented) rules, the game rounds gain momentum and then it gets interesting! I love the art on the cards and the game mechanics and concept is very innovative. Only gripe that I have is that for the price I paid for it, the game set should include tokens and dice as well. Also, because of the way the rules are presented, it may be a turn-off for some new players. For more information on Dungeoneer, check out the post on the ever resourceful Boardgamegeek.com for all your board gaming needs.

The other board game is Puerto Rico, a board game designed by Andreas Seyfarth. Let me tell you what a good game this is. It's totally dice-less and is played out in rounds where the objective of the game is to gain victory points by shipping goods which you can produce to the Old World. During the game you can take on roles as the Settler, the Mayor, the Tradesman, the Builder, the Captain, the Craftsman and the Prospector. Each of these roles will affect the players in many ways. It is also important to constantly change your strategy while playing the game based on the roles your opponent takes. Head over to Boardgamegeek.com on information about this game here.

The next set I am eyeing is probably Pirates of the Spanish Main from WizKids.com. It's a game of high seas and pirates. Cool thing is, the little ships are made from cut out cards! For RM12.00 a pack, I don't mind buying a pack to see how the game plays out. But I am still toying with the idea to get it or not.

I played Dungeoneer with my sister on Sunday and lost bitterly. I blame it to a bad hand of cards. I think it's good to let her win on the other hand, it may hook her to play more rounds of Dungeoneer!

Last night, I played a round of Puerto Rico with my sister and brother (whom I failed to mention is the co-owner of the Puerto Rico set in my home) with some explaining to guide them along the game. It was interesting to see how new players adapt to the game. Of course I got second place and my brother who monopolized the coffee trade got the highest victory points, thus earning him first place. My sister still had to learn the mechanics of them game then exploit them in more games to come I suppose.

My sudden facination with board games could be attributed to my dead-set habit (it's becoming a habit now, no more a hobby or past-time) or addiction to videogames. Playing these board games was very refreshing as I wasn't playing alone this time, but with others people too and it is a total different experience from playing solitary video games.

Dome on Sirroco

2005-10-11T21:15:00.000+08:00

WS was nice enough to drop by this weekend in Bangkok to accompany poor old me. He arrived on Friday and was lucky his timing avoided the massive traffic jam. I was stuck on the highway from Saraburi province for almost 3 hours, then the sky train back to Sala Daeng from Ploen Chit. Blergh. Getting on the train headed in the wrong direction didn't help either.

When he arrived, we went to get dinner. I wasn't feeling adventurous, so I headed to my usual Thai restaurant that was "farang" (gwai lo in Thai) friendly where the menu in English with accompanying pictures of the dishes was available. I had the beef curry egg noodles and WS had pad thai in omellete. My noodles were good! Perhaps I was starving as it was already 10pm and I haven't eaten yet :)

After that I wanted to bring him to a Jazz bar which I thought was near Lumphini park so we took an MRT to Lumphini to find it. Almost an hour of searching later, I still could not find it. Giving up, we decided to head down Silom Rd to Sirroco where Dome was. It's this bar on the 64th floor where there's an outdoor section. When we got there by taxi, we opted for the outdoor section. The view was beautiful! You could see the little dots of lights of the city scape, headlights and taillights of cars. Bangkok never looked better at night. Outside, there were long sofas, which could serve as beds, the idea I suppose was that you be as comfortable as possible and I did. I lied down and scanned the menu (pricey! Average 310 baht for cocktails and spirits). I settled for Passionfruit Sour (I tend to like my alcohol spiked with sweetness) that was made of passionfruit pulp, basil, mint and vodka. WS had his 12 year whiskey (forgot the name). We were given hot towels rolled up on a nice looking wooden plate/ My drink tasted great and I was chowing down on the olives and cashew nuts served to us. Olives were yummy!

We did some catching up and chatted till 1am or so. Then I got the bill and we went back to the apartment. Took a tuk-tuk a zipped through traffic and finally back to the apartment. Tomorrow is going to be a big day!

Shopping during lunchtime

2005-10-11T20:58:00.000+08:00

Busy, busy!

While in Bangkok one day after noodles for lunch, my colleague brought me to this little alley near Silom Road. The locals call it "Lose all your money lane", or something to that effect. The reason this lane is given this nickname is because there are so many stalls and shops along this little lane! Naturally, it was packed with office people (mainly office girls) shopping for clothes and buying food. There's so many food to buy! I was tempted to buy as much as my stomach can hold, but I did not, don't want to risk a stomach ache later!

Take your pick!

Slushy strawberry pulp?

The end product. Mmm!

I bought a cup of fruit smoothie, quite interesting really. The vendor prepacks plastic cups with chunks of fruits and it's up to you to select which combination you like. After making your selection, hand the cup to her and she will blend it in a kitchen blender with ice and semi-frozen strawberry pulp (which was pretty slushy in texture already) till the ice was finely crushed. The taste was great, sour and sweet - very refreshing!

I also bought meng kuang, little parcels with ginger, shallots, toasted coconut, wedge of lime, chilli and molasses. Yum yum!

Happy with my bounty of food, I headed back to the office with my colleague.

P/s: The title of the post says shopping which I did; for food.

BY's birthday

2005-10-11T20:36:00.000+08:00

It's been a while since I've posted anything, simply because I've been spending my evenings in Bangkok in my apartment watching episodes of Battlestar Galactica! More on this later!

Let's see, where did I left off?

Ah yes, BY's birthday dinner. This was more than a month ago and is definately way overdue. Here's a quick summary of it anyway.

The birthday boy chose La Risata in Bukit Damansara to be the venue for his birthday dinner. It was a work day and most of us turned up slightly late. WS arrived first and I remembered him showing us the photos he took when he was in Canada and America. He used this cool software called Picasa which I had no idea was so high-tech now! It has loads of nice features to use and I love the user interface.

Later everyone arrived and we ordered our dinner. I had the fish ravioli in salmon sauce and M had spaghetti vongole (if my memory serves me right). Sad to say the ravioli was disappointing. There were only 5 fish ravioli and the salmon sauce so very little! The ravioli didn't taste so good but the sauce was ok, or it could be the case of everything tasting extra nice when the stomach is empty. With the mediocre dinner aside. We cracked some jokes and had a good time. Towards the end of dinner, it was time for BY's birthday present! We got him this really interesting and complicated designer boardgame called Puerto Rico. The idea of the game is to win victory points by shipping goods off from colonial Puerto Rico to the Old World. We tried the board game on another date and I truly conclude that this boardgame is worthy of being cool!

Leaving the restaurant, I had a little chat with M on the restaurant. It used to be quite a nice place to have pasta and pizza but the quality of the food has degraded to this. Opus Bistro, located on the way to Bangsar Baru suffers the same fate. Food wasn't as good and the good service was nowhere to be seen. Time to find new places for dinner!

We got to WS's place to share the bottle of bubbly BY brought to celebrate his 27th. He then showed us pictures of Bali when he and his wife and parents-in-law went there for a diving trip. I must say, diving does look interesting. All the little fishes and those HUGE manta rays swimming around you. But I think diving is not for me, I can't even swim :)

After a nice evening, me and M decided to head for home as tomorrow is a work day. I don't normally like to hang out too long for the evenings if it's a work day tomorrow. Well, that's just me.

Office spot

2005-10-04T14:39:00.000+08:00

Since blogs can serve as journals as well, I have decided to post a picture of my work place which I set up during my attachement in the Bangkok office of my company (for me to remind myself later). No strict rules, but the left side of the notebook is where all the food items are, my handphone and wallet. On the right, my mouse, scratchpad and pen. The phone is just a decorative item, it doesn't work.

Rainy season in Thailand

2005-10-04T14:35:00.000+08:00

Sala Daeng, Bangkok @ 1:34pm, 3rd Oct 05. Took this from within my office,
hence the reflection of the lights.

Apparently, this is the last week of the rainy season in Thailand. I went out for lunch with my colleagues in an alley somewhere. We had pig's inside noodles with some kinda dark coloured broth. I wasn't too adventurous, so I opted for the milder experience of only pork meat. Heh. As we were eating, sounds of thunder grumbling repeatedly could constantly be heard. The skies are dark and with the addition of the sound of constant thunder, it was very threatening! I cannot bear the idea of being trapped in that alley when it pours. It's still thundering gently as I write this entry. I finished a bottle of Thai orange juice for 10 Baht and am keeping my favourite raw mango with spiced sugar dip for later. Lunches in Bangkok with my new colleagues are always so quick. One fact is because there are food stalls and restaurants everywhere the moment you are outside the office so less time is spent walking. Another fact is that they don't like to idle outside the office. Which is good I suppose, I don't fancy the idea of idling too much outside in Bangkok! The air quality and noise pollution is not something to be desired!

Back in Bangkok

2005-10-04T11:29:00.000+08:00

I am back in Bangkok. There's so much to blog. Let me see, 4 events to blog down still, but I haven't got the time. Maybe later tonight after work!

I was so tired yesterday that I slept at 10pm and woke up at 7am today! That's way too much sleep for me.

Mm gave me some huge fruits to eat (probably because someone doesn't want them, heh), check out the picture. Hope they're not genetically modified!

Update: I just had a banana. They're sweet! Better than the big Filipino ones. I wonder if these are local bananas. Will enquire.

Homeward bound!

2005-10-04T09:41:00.000+08:00

I am blogging this from Don Muang international airport. There’s no internet access here, so it’s going to be a delayed post. Well, there is internet available, in fact, there are 3 wireless networks now. Of which all 3 are not free.

I left work at 4:30pm with my baggage and took a taxi to the airport to beat the Friday jam in Bangkok. When I got in the taxi, moments later, the taxi driver told me that the fee will be 400Baht, I negotiated with him without much success, I had to take this cab as the previous few did not want to ferry me to the airport. So I negotiated a little more with the young cabbie that the fee of 400Baht will be inclusive of the 60Baht toll fee later when we hit the Express Way. I arrived at the airport and gave the cabbie his fee in a 500Baht note, ooh, this guy is clever (good thing my colleague warned me beforehand) and he said that he had no more change and could give me only 30Baht as change, meaning the nett fee came up to 470Baht. I put my foot down, and raised my voice (something that I rarely do) and said NO accompanied by a display of negative hand gestures. He pretended to look around, asking other cabbies for change and had the nerve to come back to me saying he could not find change, and could give me 30Baht only. I said no again, and I threatened him that I will leave the cab to get change for him and started to reach out for my 500Baht note in his hand and he said he’ll go look inside. Right, you do that! Eventually, after 5 minutes, I got back my 100Baht change. Bastard tried to rip me off. I was already ripped off, you ain’t getting more.

Next, another dilemma this time at the check in counter for the airline. There’s a Malaysian woman in front of me who I suspected had excessive baggage because after 10 minutes she could not check in. Since I had very little baggage, I offered to check in with her. Malaysia boleh, right? We were still overweight and the attendant was still very adamant about letting us check in. Then the woman started yelling and screaming threats. I only remembered words like “manager”, “I will pay the excess weight”, and “check-us in!”. Quite a jolt for me who’s already like a walking zombie. Eventually, my new friend got her flight coupon and so did I. Phew. That was scary, to think that my intention to help out in that situation turned into a vocal display of anger and frustration. But she did thank me politely in the end. She wasn’t as loud once she has calmed down, thankfully.

Taken at Burger King, 1st Floor, Don Mueng International Airport

I wanted to eat something before boarding the flight and headed to Burger King (after for a burger. Let me tell you: Burger King meals in Bangkok are expensive! I ordered a chicken burger meal and it cost me 140Baht. If you’re thinking that it’s because I’m in an airport, well, the prices are just as high for any other Burger King outlet in Bangkok, and possibly Thailand. Nuts. The burger was no where good because it was very bland and I only finished my fries and coke. Wandering the airport some more for an hour, I finally boarded the plane home to KL. 2 hours and thousands of feet in the air later, I arrived at KLIA.

But that’s not the end of the story.

The plan was for WS and M to pick me up from KL Sentral and then whiz me back to home. So only the KL Transit train was still operating. I got my ticket for the train at 12:24am, only to find out that the damned train will arrive at 1:00am. This is feeling to be such a long day and it’s not ending yet! I finally reached KL Sentral and were very apologetic about the delay and all with WS and M, who were very nice to wait patiently for me. WS caught flu and I decided not to let him drive me home as he did not sound too good, instead I asked him to drop me off at M’s place where I took her car home. I only haven’t seen M for a week but it’s like ages since, it was good to be close to her again. :)

An hour later, I am HOME, finally! My nice comfy bed! It’s so good to be back!

I pat Bunny’s head, took a shower, gave M a goodnight call and went into a blissful slumber.

Finally my week in Bangkok is drawing to a close

2005-10-04T09:39:00.000+08:00

Finally after one week in Bangkok, I am flying back for the weekends. These few mornings I’ve been waking up too early automatically. I think my bio-clock is still in sync with KL time! I’ve been very cranky because of that, particularly crankier today. When you are tired and grumpy, everything around you, anything someone does always seem to be slow and irritate you to no ends. Isn’t psychology strange?

Beginning Wednesday, I’ve had work to do. At least it’s not so boring any more during the work hours and time passes by much quicker compared to if you had nothing to do at all.

On Wednesday I went to Siam, a district within Bangkok city for a little window shopping. My objective was to get GameBoy advance games as well as a boardgame if possible. A week ago, I played Puerto Rico, this cool diceless boardgame over at BY’s place with M, LL, WS and WL. It was good fun! This has made me more curious on the availability of different boardgames out there. Of course there’s the excellent online resource for gameboards of all type: Gameboardgeek.com but to see it physically and check out the summary of the game behind the box is better.

Ok, aside aside (heh, good pun) my colleague G (who has been my guide in Bangkok) brought me to Siam, the Golden Triangle of Bangkok and it was packed with people! We headed to Siam Central and subsequently Siam Discovery to look for my items. Window shopping is always so dreadful, so many things to buy, so little money! Well, things in Bangkok aren’t that cheap, so that’s a good reason not to spend so much.

Eventually we ended up in MBK, which closely resembles Sungei Wang in terms of the people who shop there and things available for purchase. There’s the usual handphone stalls everywhere as well as fashion boutiques. I got my GameBoy games, that cost 50% cheaper than KL. Bargain!

Close to two hours later, we were defeated by fatigue and hunger. Navigating the mall in a chaotic environment is no joke, it wears you out! So my colleague and I had a nice steamboat/BBQ dinner at BBQ Plaza in MBK. We over-ordered, but I managed to finish up all the food. Wasting food is a sin!

We said our goodbyes after dinner and I went back to my hotel via the BTS. I had a choice between getting off Sala Daeng station (which I am familiar with) or Chong Nonsi station. I took a gamble that Chong Nonsi would be nearer to the hotel and got off at this station. When I got out of the station, there were not many street lights and I could not recognize any landmarks. I panicked a little, and hastened my pace. Thankfully, 5 minutes later, I recognized Silom Road! That’s where the hotel is located and that’s where I should be. Phew!

I got into my room and quickly took a shower. I was feeling quite peckish and remembered that I bought a packet of raw mango and meng kuang during lunch to snack on. Raw mango is nice, it comes with a packet of spiced sugar to eat with. Meng kuang is a parcel of some sorta leaf, with ginger bits, toasted coconut slivers, small wedges of lime, shallots and maltose sugar. The taste is an explosion of flavours in your mouth. Yum yum yum!

I finished them and watched TV and played some computer games before giving M a call and then hitting the sack for a much deserved sleep!

OD on pork bacon!

2005-09-28T12:28:00.000+08:00

I am a greedy pig, I admit it! Today at breakfast provided by the hotel, I took lots of bacon. That's Mount Bacon for you. I also helped myself to more ham than I can probably eat. I don't know why. Towards the end after gorging on my breakfast (that resembled a mountain), I feel like I've had enough bacon and ham for now! Ugh...

Orange juice was pleasantly nice. This is not normal OJ though. The juice is squeezed from Thai orange that has less acidity tang to it. The skin is green in colour and its size much smaller than a normal orange coloured orange fruit.

I tried the fruit salad and some wedges of watermelon today. Either the fruits are normally sweet in Thailand, or, they soak them in sugar solution! Even my sweet tooth couldn't cope with the sudden intensity of sweetness from the fruits. Seems, artificial to me.

The walk to the office took longer today. There is this busy road which I fear crossing now. You just cross and hope for the best!

Had my glass of Thai iced latte sold downstairs the office that was sweet, sweet, sweet! I hope I do not become diabetic!

2 more days till my sentence for this week ends. Can't wait to board that plane back to KL!

I am listening to...

2005-09-27T17:11:00.000+08:00

Mod Four - หายใจเป็นเธอ! Two young Thai singers who sing poppy tunes. My colleague was going on and on about them. Must admit, the song is quite catchy. Don't ask me what the title means! They remind me of HK's Twins.

^_^

Godiva chocolates!

2005-09-27T17:02:00.000+08:00

Being the busybody that I am, I spotted a box of Godiva chocolates in the office which has been there for a long time, apperently. Its wrapping is still on! I wonder, if on the last week that I will be in Bangkok, will anyone notice if I took it home with me? :D

In Bangkok office

2005-09-27T16:46:00.000+08:00

Woke up a little too early today, I think my bio-clock is still in sync with KL. Had a shower and went to have breakfast. Breakfast in the hotel was the usual Americana spread. Bacon (pork, yum yum!), ham, etc. The usual stuff.

I went to the consierge to try to arrange for Internet in my room today. Can you believe that I was told that the hotel was not Internet ready by yesterday's consierge but today I was told a different story? Even their website and the welcome note in the hotel advertised the availability of Internet access. She said I should be in the room to supervise, so I said, fine. Tonight then. Hmmph! At the same time, I see caucasians getting warmer and friendlier attention.

Then I walked to the office in a nice slow pace as I had loads of time to waste. Got a cup of my favourite Thai iced latte and went to work. Ok, honestly, I've not done much work as you see from me blogging twice today. :D

Let me tell you about my lunch. I went to this coffeeshop (equivalent lah) and let my colleagues do the ordering. Which is a non verbal process, you just write down what you want to eat on a piece of paper on the table and So, today I had:

1. Sticky rice
2. Pork neck with sauce and sesame seed (loads of them)
3. Som tum (raw papaya salad)
4. Pork in soup
5. Grilled chicken

To share of course, among 3 of my other colleagues. I'm not that greedy and my stomach space is not infinite. The food came very quickly, and my favourite is som tum followed by the sticky rice. Each table had a plate of uncooked cabbage, long beans and sweet basil (I spotted a little catepillar on my vegetable plate, so freshm, huh?). Custom thing I guess.

Lunch was finished with ice-cream with coconut milk drizzled with sweet corn soup. Nice :)

Then I realised that some young teenage girls in sexy uniforms in the coffeeshop. I asked my colleague about them and she said that they are students from a local university here in Bangkok. I said ok! I should have studied in Bangkok then! However, each local university will have their own uniforms. Apparently, often lower tier universities will have tight uniforms for the girls, short black miniskirt and tight white blouse, accessorised by a brown leather belt. Higher tier universities dress their female students in more decent uniforms. Interesting!

Now I am waiting to do A) Some window shopping or B) go back to the hotel!

Bangkok

2005-09-27T16:08:00.000+08:00

My goodness if yesterday wasn't a tiring day I don't know what it. Firstly, I didn't get enough sleep. I get very anxious when I know I need to travel. Not phobia, rather the excitement/worry I experience when I am at my destination.

Woke up at 6:30am to get to the airport. My dad was kind enough to give me a ride. When I was at KLIA, Air Asia had already closed their ticketing service, to my discovery after I have collected my flight coupons.

The flight wasn't that smooth. I don't know if it was the cheap black PVC leather bound seats or that the plane was old. As the plane deployed its flaps and began circling in the air to land at Don Muang Airport, Bangkok, the whole fuselage of the plane was rattling mildly, giving me a headache as well. Not having enough sleep doesn't help at this point as experience has taught me that I will always end up sick in the air when I don't have enough sleep before a plane ride.

Once I was in the airport, I cleared customs and grabbed my little bag from the baggage belt and began looking for my colleague who was supposed to pick me up. And straigtaway we vroomed to Saraburi, about 100km away from Bangkok city to attend a client meeting in the factory there. The ride took forever. The meeting even worse. Nothing came out of the meeting, gah! Wasted time there! And the stress!

When the meeting ended, it was already 6:30pm. I dread the long ride back to Bangkok city, which took another 1.5 hours. Another 100kms. I dozed off, waking up only to realise that I was not yet in Bangkok city! The sun has set and lights were lit. Finally arrived at the drop off point, where I got off the client's company van and zoomed off, as if I am not wanted. Right, recomposing and reorienting myself, I took out my hotel voucher (I asked my colleague to scribble the name of the hotel as well as the road where the hotel is located in Thai to present to the taxi driver) and flagged a taxi. The taxi brought me to Narai Hotel (I rate it 2 stars), an old hotel along Silom Road in Bangkok. The rooms were well, refurbished, but still exhibiting age. In any case, the room was clean. Which is the most important point.

I went out to look for my office in Bangkok and found it after walking for 20 minutes. Had dinner in a restaurant where I can point at pictures with minimal verbal communication (I wasn't in the mood for experimenting). After dinner I went back to the hotel, had a nice hot shower and crashed on the bed. Watching Battlestar Galactica and playing a little computer games on my laptop before I fell asleep.

4 more days to serve for my sentence.

Traffic jam in the morning

2005-09-22T18:38:00.000+08:00

That's me in the blue car

The damn jam sucks!

I have been waking up extra early to get to work this week. All for the reason to escape the morning chaotic traffic jam at the PLUS Damansara Toll plaza. So far so good until today, I was going to into the exit to Damansara and was shocked to see cars queuing all the way till the entrance of the exit. Dammit! It was only 8:00am! It's not supposed to be so heavy!

I hate traffic in the mornings. Especially when driving a car with manual transmission. It gets so dreadful. Ugh!

Tomorrow had better be not a repeat of today. Otherwise, I'm going to cry. And perhaps call in sick. Hmmph!

14 Day loss of licenses for errant drivers

2005-09-22T10:15:00.000+08:00

Yup, the Transport Minister of Malaysia has announced this over the newspapers today. Here is the link from The Star. A list of offences which will get your driver's license suspended for 14 days is published there.

So my thoughts are, this is just another popular trend of the government here. All talk no action. Seriouslly, the reason why Malaysian drivers are they way they are today (monsters on the road, devils and demons have better etiqutte) is because there is lack of traffic police presence! Lack of reinforcing the law from these police officers. If you're a Malaysian, who resides in KL, how often do you see traffic police officers patrolling the streets or accident prone roads? Zero right? So where are there traffic police officers? Why are motorcyclists still shooting the red lights? Why are there still morons on the emergency lane on the highways? Another thing, just because a person loses his driver's license for 14 days will keep him off the road. Come on, who is going to catch that guy who doesn't have this document anyway? The traffic police officers? Oh wait, they're no where to be found.

I am going to compare the standard of our traffic police officers to those in Australia. During my time in Melbourne, in was in my friend's car after dinner in a small suburb. Suddenly, this car came out of no where and scraped the side of his car. Well, my friend being a Malaysian immediately gave chase after the car. The chase went on near a parking lot and both cars approached a traffic light which was turning amber. The car in front managed to cross the intersection in time and at this time, the light had already turned red. But, my friend was hot on pursuit and he went through the red light anyway. Guess what happened? Within seconds, out of no where, a traffic patrol car blared its sirens and flashed our car with high beams to get our attention. My friend saw this and immediately pulled over. He got a very good scolding from the police officer, saying how stupid and wreckless he was and how he could have hurt someone by shooting that red light. My friend explained the situation to him and the police officer actually went to hunt down the car that hit my friend's car (who was hiding, engine dead in a parking area nearby). The police officer warned my friend and let him off. How efficient is that?

Another incident, in downtown Melbourne. A friend and I went down to Russell Street to check out the arcades. Being a first time driver in Melbourne, he did not know that the empty parking spot where he parked his car was meant for buses only. We got out of the car around 10:30pm. When we got back to the car hours later, we saw a ticket attached on his car's windscreen. He got fined for parking in a non designated parking bay. And the timestamp on that ticket was 10:43pm.

So to conclude, as good as our government is trying to do something about the driving habits of Malaysians in general and to lower the rate of accidents, they really need to start from the bottom instead of just parading around with all these statements. Which I am sure will be forgotten in a month's time.

Marimekko Olkalaukku

2005-09-15T14:33:00.000+08:00

I saw this bag in Prints in Singapore and was very attracted to it. I tried on the one in navy blue and went through the compartments and was glad to discover that it didn't have too many. Just the way I like it. Too many compartments in a bag just complicates matters. This bag will be great for going to work, as a replacement for my aging messenger bag in brown. The quality of the bag is very good, the stitching nice and clean. I also tried the bag in red too. The bag looks the best in red but it's begging attention from people. Which I don't really like. Finally, navy blue it is then. All's well, until I saw the price tag. SGD179.00! I promptly hung the bag back on the display hanger because it was so very expensive.

Now I regret and wished that I bought it! I found out later after the trip that Marimekko bags are very rare in South East Asia. Drats...hopefully when I go back to Singapore one fine day, it will still be there waiting for me.

New background!

2005-09-15T14:29:00.000+08:00

I saw a nice pattern in one of M's interior design mags and thought I'd translate that into a background pattern for this blog. So I fired up Photoshop and started rekindling with the tools and shortcut in Photoshop after a long absence in using the software.

I stayed up till 1am this morning to finish this piece of graphic. It took me much trial and error and I came up with the end product after an hour.

I kinda like the effect it has on the blog. Psychedellic as M calls it!

Out of shape and memories of cycling

2005-09-14T21:48:00.000+08:00

I had a good session of futsal yesterday with my colleague and then it hit me: I am out of shape! Just an hour of exercise and I'm panting like a huff-bag.

I used to remember last time when I was fitter, I could cycle from Taman Tun to SS2 for my tuition class. In about 30 minutes or so. This was of course achievable then as the road system did not allow for fast moving traffic and there were more junctions with traffic lights.

My folks found out, towards the end of my days as a fifth former, that I cycled great distance to get to my tuition classes. I didn't mind it of course, because it was fun! I had friends that get around on bikes too. They made it even more fun. We were cycling everywhere then. To the mamak, to tuition, to a friend's place. Everywhere!

Now I'm quite pampered as I can afford my own car. Sadly, sometimes to get to somewhere near, I drive instead of taking a walk. But! I can justify this by saying that the roads in KL these days are full of maniacs and the hot stuffy weather doesn't make the walk more comforting.

Don't get me wrong, I used to enjoy walking while I was in Melbourne. It was nice and cooling and perfect for walking.

Hmm...I think I will still drive any where. I love my car! As for getting back into shape, I think I will maybe think about doing something.

The haze is creeping back!

2005-09-12T10:09:00.000+08:00

I heard on the radio today while on the way to work that the haze is back in dangerous amounts in Malaysia. The city of Kuala Selangor has hit unhealthy levels again due to the change of direction in the wind that is carrying the smoke from Indonesia. No wonder I'm seeing a blurry scene from my house again.

The Malaysian haze has made it into Wikipedia! Check out the entry here.

Flat tyre

2005-09-09T10:48:00.000+08:00

This is a follow up on my bad Wednesday post. To top things off for that Wednesday, I found out after work that my car had a flat tyre. To make matters worse, it was drizzling a little and there is the threat of heavy rain judging from the look of the dark skies above. Oh, the bad luck today!

I thought I can drive it to a near mechanic to get it fixed right away, but as I started driving, the steering was heavy and not to risk rim and car damage, I parked in an empty parking bay in Sri Hartamas (thankfully) and started taking out all the equipment to replace the flat tyre with the spare. Right, time to get my male instinct up and fix this flat tyre! Luckily M was there, and she was nice to hold an umbrella while I replace the tyre so I wouldn't get too wet from the gentle rain ^.^

The tyre switch took about 30 minutes, thankfully all the tools supplied by Perodua made the job very easy. Wiping off my sweat, I finished the job and gave the nuts that fastened the tyre to the car's axle a final tightening with the wrench and off I went hunting for a mechanic in my t-shirt drenched with my sweat. I didn't want to leave it till tomorrow as I travel back and forth on the NKVE and I really dread what will happen if the tyre falls off on the NKVE in the event that I go too fast.

Eventually, at 8pm, I found a mechanic that was still open. I parked and requested for the punctured tyre to be fixed. Upon closer inspection, the tyre was already cracking! Cracks were forming on certain parts on the wall of the tyre. It had to be replaced. This incident cost me some money, of which I don't have alot now, but it has to be done. The cracks don't look too comforting!

Thinking about it, I am actually quite blessed that this is my first time I had a flat tyre which I had to replace myself. I've been driving for almost 8 years now and only twice had I experienced a flat tyre. Twice it was in a safe environment and not along a busy road or highway. My brother was nice enough to change the first tyre puncture I had when I was away at work. Surprisingly, I managed to change the tyre that day with no hassle and no puzzled looks on how to proceed next, after I have unscrewed something. Must be primal instinct or something, heh.

How Malaysians can save money!

2005-09-07T13:44:00.000+08:00

After witnessing something horrible on the way to lunch today, I came up with some ideas on how we can save up some money. A couple of guys were using the zebra crossing zone to cross a little road when a kwai loh (that's caucasian) speeds in a Kembara, one hand on the steering, one more holding his mobile phone stops in front of them and hits his horn followed by some hand gestures. Of course, which Malaysian driver will not show hand gestures? They almost always do because Malaysian drivers are always right. Always, always right.

So here it is:

1. Don't bother painting, farbicating or constructing anything which resembles or has the words "zebra" on it.

I meant zebra crossing zones in the public roads in Malaysia. Most drivers do not heed the sign which means that you must stop for pedestrians to cross the road. I dare you to cross the roads using zebra crossings here in Malaysia. Better be insured first before you do it.

By not spending money on constucting these white elephants, we save money on materials used for construction such as, alloys, plastics, paint and worker costs. We should use the money instead, to build stupid looking flowers and trees out of the alloys, plastics, paints and worker costs. We could put up stupid looking strings and garlands of lights above us. Of course both the latter are purely optional and if omitted could really offer tax payers some tax relief.

2. When buying a new car, try to bargain for the indicator lights (blinkers, amber in colour) to be removed when the new car rolls in. This way, you can try probably save a couple of hundreds when they're removed from the car. I mean, who uses them in Malaysia anyway right? Remove the front, side and rear sets for optimum savings. Better second hand value too, as you can stress to the next potential owner that he or she will not have the hassle to remove the indicator lights from your car.

You should remove these indicator lights because in Malaysia, amber means "go very fast" and try to break the speed of sound. So when you wish to switch lanes and flick the indicator lights on, like you should (but really, who does it? Waste time, lah!) the car behind you on the lane which you want to switch to in the first place, will try to break the speed of sound and floor the gas pedal in his car. This is probably one of the factors that contribute to traffic accidents.

3. This relates to number 1, but it's here anyway. Do not hang informative signs at all, do not construct them do not bother. No one in Malaysia reads signs. Do not smoke? Smoke! Push, pull! Save money and use that money to build even stupider things. Like monkey shaped rubbish bins or pitcher plant monuments or landscapping with logs made of cement.

4. Don't build monkey shapped rubbish bin or pitcher plant monuments or landscapping with logs made of cement.

5. This can go on forever...Ooh! The amount money we can save!

P/S: I forgot Ayah Pin's teapot and teacups.

Gah!! Stupid, stupid Wednesday morning!

2005-09-07T09:39:00.000+08:00

Today is so testing. In the wee hours of the morning, it was so hot and humid. Throw in some mosquitoes trying to make a buffet out of you. I couldn't sleep well at all.

Got in my car and drove off to work only to be stuck in a bloody bad jam before the Damansara toll plaza for almost 30 minutes. Why can't the PLUS officials marshall the flow of traffic? Traffic cones should be set up, like the toll plaza near Eastin Hotel. Fu*kers probably don't care once cars exit their precious toll gates. The congestion is caused by idiots, or MALAYSIAN DRIVERS who love to jump queue. MALAYSIA SO BOLEH. My ass! I am making a statement now that the general populace in Malaysia, yes you degree holders and rich bastards as well, all have the mentality and the mindset of a 4th world country, if there wasn't a 4th world country, we'd be it. Ahem.

When I arrived in Sri Hartamas, I was met with another act or stupidity. I was queueing up behind a pregnant lady who bought milk in a certain petrol station. The cashier processed the transaction, but forgot to put the money into the cash till, realising only when she closed it. She then got the help of a fellow colleague who took his time to assist her. This all happened when I was being served. She then took my juice and scanned it and took my money. If you're going to just make the cash till open again to put in the woman's money, why not process my transaction first? The till will open magically and you can put your entire life savings (and that woman's money) into that cash register for all I care. Just don't make me wait 5 fricking minutes to buy juice just because you lack the common sense of a turnip. Voltaire was right, "common sense is not very common". I agree with you buddy.

Ok, I feel better now. Time to eat my green tea and red bean bun and drink my juice and probably a cup of coffee and hope I will be all cheery and happy later.

What's wrong with the world?

2005-09-05T14:40:00.000+08:00

As I begin to take an interest in hurricane Katrina, I am shocked at the devastation it has caused and appalled that aid is taking a long time to reach the cities hit by Katrina. What is going on? The disaster happened right in your backyard, dear America. Why the long wait for aid and relief efforts to arrive?

My colleague passed me an interesting article on CNN.com today. It's about an open letter from The Times-Picayune of New Orleans to the President of The United States of America.

Also, Michael Moore has something to say about Katrina too.

So many disasters this year. The tsunami months ago in Asia, the week long haze in KL, the train accident in Japan and now Katrina.

SIGH!

Singapore! Day 4

2005-09-04T01:55:00.000+08:00

Today we had our brunch at Marmalade Pantry, situated on the lower ground floor of posh Palais Renaissance along Orchard Road. This restaurant is reputed to dish up good food. The ambience was very nice, the seating layout very spacious and colours a nice theme of light orange and beige. Service was very prompt and friendly. We were shown the ala carte menu as well as the breakfast menu. Everything looks so yummy and I didn’t know what to order. I kept looking at my watch, and it’s always 11:30am only. You see, we booked a table for 12pm and we got there before 11:30am. I kept going between the ala carte menu and the breakfast menu. In the end, I ended up ordering a rib-eye steak sandwich, medium rare and in spirit of the breakfast half of brunch, I ordered a latté as well. M ordered the breakfast set, which comes with eggs (she requested for scrambled eggs), toast, grilled field mushrooms and bacon (pork bacon! Mmm!).

The food didn’t take too long to come and I was staring at a huge bun sitting on a lovely looking rib-eye steak that was sitting on another slice of bun spread with wasabi-mayonnaise sauce. The taste? Absolutely fantastic! The beef was cooked to perfection, medium-rare as promised. The wasabi-mayonnaise sauce gives a very slight spicy flavour in between mouthfuls of beef and bun. My sandwich came with salad and deep-fried thinly sliced sweet potato, potato and yam chips! The cup of latté I ordered was great too, not too strong, very milky. However, there was too much milk foam on it, but I’ll let it pass, I’m having too much of a good time with my rib-eye steak sandwich to bother about that.

M’s breakfast set was pretty good too! The scrambled eggs were creamy, simply delicious. It had a very satisfying milky taste to it. The mushrooms were good too and they were very fresh. She looked like she enjoyed the toast, I forgot what kind of bread it was. But it must have been good bread. The bacon, I thought was ok. I didn’t particularly liked the taste of some parts of the bacon.

It seems that the whole reason why M wanted to go to Marmalade Pantry was because of the Sticky Date Pudding. When dessert came, I understand why. The pudding is served simply with a dollop of toffee sauce and comes with a scoop of the most delicious vanilla bean ice cream. The pudding, still warm was sweet, but not too sweet until it becomes difficult to eat. The toffee sauce gives the pudding an extra sweet factor. I hope I do not become diabetic (touch wood!) after this pudding. The ice cream has a very intense vanilla flavour to it, one of the best I have tasted so far. No kidding! Yum, yum, YUM!

I am very pleased with Marmalade Pantry and the prices for food here is reasonable. Highly recommended!

M took-away 2 cupcakes: Nutella and Lemon. Both were very delicious, but my favorite was the lemon cupcake but this is not to say that the Nutella cupcake was bad, it is in fact very good too. The strong citrusy lemon taste resides in the frosting on the cupcake and it was iced just enough for the cupcake. J

After brunch, we braved the Saturday shopping crowd in Orchard Road and decided to do some shopping. Wandering into usual shopping spots such as Lucky Plaza (to get my mom’s Filipino shampoo), Paragon, Takashimaya, Robinsons and the Hereen where we spent most of our time. I didn’t get much , just a couple of t-shirts and a shirt. But it was so tiring lugging around all our purchases from shop to shop. By 5pm, I was already wishing to go back to the hotel.

7pm came and M finalised her purchases in Orchard Road. We took a taxi and got back to the hotel. I was glued on the bed and didn’t want to go out anymore. M wanted to go to Canelé again, this time for the ice-cream. So I oblidged. Hailing a cab (the cab driver didn’t really like the “gahmen”) we headed for Robertson Walk and found ourselves eating Mee Poh at a coffeeshop along Mohamad Sultan Road, where the clubs are. Dinner was funny, the auntie who was selling Mee Poh cannot speak a word of English or Cantonese, so I actually used my oh so limited Mandarin vocabulary and got us 2 bowls of Mee Poh. Ordering drinks was a very similar experience. Hee hee.

Canelé here we come! We sat down and had a glance at the ice-cream menu. I ordered L’Amour and M had the Madagascar. L’Amour is rose petal ice-cream topped with lychee bits and raspberry ice-cream garnished with a tiny rose flavoured macaron, ose meringue sticks and fresh raspberriesl. I couldn’t really catch the rose flavour in the ice cream until much later, when the ice-cream was almost done. Mmm, delicious! At this point, I was so stuffed with food that I could only sit and smile with content.

M’s Madagascar is vanilla bean ice cream with a vanilla bean sugar-cone with some strawberry balsamic salsa and topped with vanilla mascarpone foam. The ice cream was not too bad, it simply could not compete with Marmalade Pantry’s vanilla bean ice cream. I enjoyed the sugar-cone as I found it to be very fragrant and tasty. Overall, I liked my L’Amour more!

M went to chit-chat with Jill the friendly and opinionated waitress and Mark, the pastry-chef on duty as well as his assistant whom I forgot her name. She managed to score us free samples of the Tiramisu cake which I thought was brilliant! There is actually chocolate liquor in the tiramisu. As we made our way to the counter to pay for our desserts, Mark offered us to try the Bloodymary named ice cream. Apparently it’s on the menu, and it’s their least popular ice cream creation. I tried some and it’s weird! It’s made of tomato, which would explain the salty taste of the ice cream followed by a sweet jolt after the tartness from the tomato. Then a bit of spicyness would ensue. What a unique ice cream flavour! Nasi lemak ice cream, anyone?

Ice cream at Canelé was probably our last meal in Singapore before we take our journey back to KL. My stay at Singapore has been a fun one, mainly gastronomical hits and misses. M has been so nice on this trip to plan and make all those bookings for the restaurants even before we were at the Malaysian immigrations department to have our passport electronically stamped. Also to take me on an eating spree. It has also been tiring.

I am going to dread Sunday as Monday always looms about when Sunday starts. Hope I don’t get too depressed!

Singapore! Day 3 - Ikukan

2005-09-03T23:21:00.000+08:00

Ikukan @ Mohamed Ali Lane

After M got back from work, we lazed around until it was time to head over to Ikukan. M found out about Ikukan from a blog and after reading the rather positive review on the restaurant, we decided to give it a go.

We walked there from The Scarlet which didn't take more than 10 minutes. We booked for 8pm but was there way before that. We were seated and the first thing I noticed that it was a little too dim. No little spot light above us. Then came the waitress (who couldn't really converse in English, preferring Mandarin and us who cannot converse in Mandarin preferred to converse in English) who showed us the menu and took our drinks order.

The menu looked promising, most of it a fusion of Japanese and Italian elements in the description. The kaiseki set didn't look too interesting, perhaps it was as M commented that the description of the food items were not well worded. So M and I decided to go for the Prix Fix sets, where you can choose a starter, a mid-meal, the main meal and of course, dessert. I chose:

*Starter*
Chilled peach soup with jelly consommé

*Mid-meal*
Sashimi

*Main-meal*
Grilled fillet of Cod with teriyaki sauce

*Dessert*
Ginger Ice

M had:

*Starter*
Pan seared duck breast

*Mid-meal*
Dobin-mushi

*Main-meal*
Grilled water eel in egg omellete

*Dessert*
Macha Ice

Ok, let's start with what I had. My chilled peach soup came in a martini glass and a small little bamboo spoon to drink it with. The peach soup looks to me like thick peach juice, but the best part is possibly the jellied consommé which gave a very delicious salty kick to the otherwise already fragrant and sweet peach soup.

My sashimi came next on a bowl made of ice. Nice! Presentation wise, the sashimi was the best looking during my whole dinner. I had slices of salmon, tuna and one more which I think is probably mackarel. I could be wrong, as it wasn't oily at all. The sashimi was fresh and the slices were thin, just how I like them.

The main dish came next, cod fish grilled with teriyaki sauce accompanied with garden salad and thin strips of cabbage. On the first bite, the fish was tasty and fresh. On subsequent bites however, the teriyaki sauce used tend to lend a very salty to the fish, which I find too much when only half the fillet was eaten. Having some salad didn't really help. I didn't think much of the cod fish and as such wasn't so impressed with it. Too salty and nothing extraordinary. Presentation was simple.

Dessert! Ginger Ice, this came to a bit of a disappointment to me. The ice-cream was served on a plate, with fresh raspberries and blueberries, with swirls of raspberry coulis on the side of the plates for decoration. My first scoop of the ice-cream told me that this was simply vanilla ice-cream with bits of ginger in it. I was expecting more ginger in the ice-cream. Poo!

Now I'm going to write about M's Prix Fix selection. The duck breast was great! Perhaps the best of the night. The sauce and horseradish mustard which accompanies it gives a very flavourful taste with the duck. The meat was seared so that only the center was still medium rare giving off that delightfully delicious reddish hue, making it so juicy. I like the duck very much. The size of the portion of duck was large for a starter and I know of some restaurants in KL that charges the price of a main meal for that size.

Next on M's set was Dobin-mushi. I asked her if there were any prawns inside but there were none, instead there were mussels. Perhaps there are many other ways of preparing dobin-mushi. When I had a sip of the soup, it didn't really do it for me. The dobin-mushi we had in Waraku, KL was much more flavorful. Hands down!

Ah, the main meal, eel! The omellete was served in a long plate, immersed in a starchy clear broth. When I saw M dismantling the omellete with her fork to get the eel out, I could see the THICK layer of egg enveloping the eel. So crude! I think the omellete layer should be much thinner. I wonder if the main meal should be renamed to omellete with eel instead of eel in omellete, I mean, come on, you want eel to be the main ingredient, not the eggs. Are eggs on low demand today, that they can afford to put in so much eggs for the omellete. Thankfully the eel (when we could find it in that mass of eggs) was tasty and fresh to the taste.

M's dessert was pretty standard fare, macha ice-cream, decorated with swirls of green tea sauce and custard sauce, garnished with fresh berries. The quality of the ice-cream was pretty good, it wasn't bitter enough and not too sweet, but honestly, nothing to shout about.

So in the end, my night at Ikukan wasn't really that satisfying, at least one item in each of our Prix Fix menu respectively managed to shine through the night; the pan seared duck breast and chilled peach soup with jellied consommé. The bill came to about SGD100 - SGD120 for the both of us. Paying that amount, we could have had a much better Japanese meal at Waraku, KL. Waraku is still number 1 in my books.

To give Ikukan the benefit of the doubt, they specialise in grilling food. Perhaps we ordered the wrong dishes for the night. A more experienced waitress told us that the grilled beef and tuna salad was the more popular choice. It will be quite hard to convince me to dine at Ikukan again if ever I set foot on Singapore again. ;)

Dinner aside, we strolled along Club Street while M hunted for dessert in the many restaurants and cafés. Not finding any, we strayed back to our hotel room and retired for the day. Tomorrow, brunch at Marmalade Pantry!

Singapore! Day 3

2005-09-02T16:38:00.000+08:00

2 September 2005

Old Buildings in Chinatown

Interior of the market in Chinatown

Day 3 in Singapore. Rushed off to the bathroom for a quick shower because M had a meeting with her colleague soon. We had a quick breakfast at Desire in The Scarlet Hotel. M ordered me the Western breakfast while she had the Eastern set. She managed to swap plain coffee to a latte for me.

Our breakfast sets came together and M's set came with nasi lemak (in very high class arrangement), fresh fruit and a bowl of porridge. There was a small bowl of mamak mee goreng as well.

Mine had a mix of muesli and dried fruits, a poached egg on a bed of spinach, corn and bacon fritters, toast and butter and a serve of fresh fruit. My poached egg was the yummiest! The yolk oozing out of an egg is such a lovely sight *^.^* I enjoyed the muesli as well. The latte, was one of the best I've had in a long, long time. Not to strong, and lots of milk. Yum!

With breakfast done, I walked M to her workplace again today and found myself in Far East Square again. The skies today are very overcast, I fear rain. Anyway, I decided to explore the Chinatown part of Singapore. I didn't really plan my journey today and it was more of an exploration thing. Equipped with the D-SLR and a bottle of water, I took photos during my exploration of Chinatown.

Some how, I don't think Chinatown in Singapore is all that appealing to me. Perhaps the Malaysian chinese culture and social patterns are very similar to the Singaporean counterpart. What they have, we have too in Malaysia, but, I walked most of Chinatown today anyway. There's the market part which still looks the same. I remember my grandma and mom used to always drag me there to get the daily groceries. The Heritage Centre in Chinatown looks cleaner now not like how I used to remember it, packed with people and puddles of water everywhere. I ended up in People's Park and then Lucky Chinatown.

When I have had enough of Chinatown, I headed for the hotel, and not a moment too soon too! It started drizzling and began to rain even more. It was 11:30am when I got back to the hotel. I downloaded the photos I took to M's iBook and started the tedious process of renaming the photos. I edited draft copies of my Day 1 and Day 2 blog entries before posting them. With that done, I decided to disturb my office colleagues via MSN.

I was feeling quite peckish but I decided to wait till 2pm before going to Maxwell Food Center for something to eat. The food center is only 3 minutes walk from The Scarlet. I put off lunch till 2pm to avoid the office lunch crowd so I can have a nice lunch at my leisure.

Come lunch time I headed over to Maxwell Food Center. It was still drizzling, but not so dense that an umbrella was required. So much to eat, so little stomach space. I settled for Singaporean Char Kuey Teow. I wanted to recall what the difference was between Malaysian and Singaporean Char Kuey Teow. To drink I ordered something bizarre. Soya bean milk with fresh watermelon juice. The kuey teow has more liquid to it and is slightly sweet to the taste. Otherwise, it's the same as the Malaysian variant. The soya bean milk concoction was surprisingly quite pleasant, in fact, I quite enjoyed it. I spotted a dessert shop earlier on and ordered a peanut soup tong suey. Mmm, I prefered this stall to the one I had yesterday at Lau Pa Sat. The peanuts were almost melted making the soup tastier. Lunch came up to about SGD5.80. I bought some rolled cake, one with coconut, another with red bean for later in case I feel hungry again in the hotel room.

Now here I am writing this blog entry, waiting for M to finish work so we can go to Ikukkan! It's an upmarket Japanese restaurant nearby Mohamad Ali Lane. Can't wait for that. It's still rainy and moody out there in Singapore. Maybe I shall take a nice nap.

Oh! I just discovered that The Scarlet Hotel has a Bodum coffee percolator for making coffee in the room! How cool is that? I discovered it when I was making myself a cup of coffee. I tore open the packet of coffee and poured the contents into the tea cup. The texture of the coffee grain wasn't that of dehydrated or instant coffee. I was puzzled. How do I make coffee then? Aha! I was searching the back of the cupboard when my hand landed on the percolator my chance. Surprise, surprise! Hey it was black in colour, the cupboard was black in colour, it was camouflaged!

Now for that nap...

Singapore! Day 2

2005-09-02T14:03:00.000+08:00

1 September 2005

Singapore Merlion

Trail at Fort Canning Park

Statue of Sir Stamford Raffles

Tall buildings at the financial district

Boats at Clifford Pier

I had to wake up early today as M needed to go to work and after taking a quick shower and brushing up, I walked her to Far East Plaza. She was met with her colleague and that marks my time along in Singapore for today.

I am in Far East Square armed with a tourist map of Singapore and its attractions, M's new D-SLR camera and a bottle of water. Singapore today is overcast! Not a good day for photo taking. But! The tummy demands attention. I was hungry and was told about Ya Kun Kopitiam (they have a website!) which apparently serves good kaya toast and coffee. So I sat down and ordered kaya toast with butter and a kopi-peng (iced coffee) to go with it. Amount came up to SGD2.60. The coffee came first and drawing my first sip from through the straw, I concluded immediately that the coffee was too diluted! Minutes later the toasted bread came. Let me try to decribe it: the bread was sliced very thinly, toasted brown, sandwiching the kaya and butter. First bite? Not very impressive. The bread was too thin, the kaya was nothing to shout about. I think I prefer my toast not to be too brown. Killiney's Kopitiam is still my favourite in Singapore! (By the way, the Killiney's Kopitiam in Uptown, DU sucks.) I did not try the 1/2 boiled eggs, but judging from other people's orders, the eggs looks intentionally slightly over-cooked, but very consistant though because the eggs look the same for all the other orders. Oh, the staff opens the eggs for you. Breakfast wasn't that bad, it was slightly sub-par for me.

Onwards! What does a tourist in a foreign land normally do? Walk around with a map in hand and take photos of course! My first stop was Far East Square (in the daytime) and I took some photos of the ING and Singtel buildings. I walked about and took photos of the gate into the square which looked grand. When I was inside the square, it seemed that it was under renovations for a face lift perhaps. I was holding on to my camera when 2 guards from behind told me that this is a private property and that no photos can be taken. I complied but I thought "Not that I wanted to take any photos anyway, the interior is a mess."

Next, I wanted to go to Clarke Quay to take photos. Clarke Quay has been given a face lift! Gone are the tacky looking pubs with the loud Ah Beng music, in are the upmarket eateries, cafés, bistros and bars. Overall, it looks much nicer now than before, I like it! But not that much to pull a chair in a restaurant to pay premium for standard food. ;) On the road I was walking, Clarke Quay was on the other side of the road, which seemed to involve alot of roads to cross just to get there, so I put it off and decided to head to Funan Shopping Center, your digital lifestyle mall!

I was nearing Funan mall after walking around and taking random shots at the restored heritage buildings along Hokkien Street and other subjects that caught my eye. At this point I was already getting sweaty but thankfully, the skies were overcast and it made walking more bearable than normal. Continuing to Funan mall, I came across Fort Canning Park and I thought why not, just a quick peek. I ended up doing the whole circuit in the park! I checked out the Spice gardens, the Battle Box (literally, just a box made of concrete...), cool 9 lbs cannons, Fort Canning building, the Fort's entrance and the archeological dig site. The park paths are clean (I did not spot a single piece of garbage) and the air fresh. Nature sounds of the birds and insect fill the air. When comparing the park, I benchmarked it against Malaysia's own Lake Gardens (Tasik Perdana). Fort Canning Park came out tops and Lake Gardens is nothing compared to it. When I was towards the end of the circuit, I saw a caucasian woman sleeping on a bench. Ok. Weird. Anyway, it was almost lunch time and I headed to Funan mall.

The mall just got a face lift as well (what is it with face lifts in this trip?), everything looks clean and metallic. The whole shop sells eletrical gizmos, laptops, console games and peripherals and what not. Basically, all things IT. Much like Low Yatt in KL, but sans crowd. I explored the mall and made some comparisons in prices for some items and concluded that it is not all that cheap to get these electrical stuff in Singapore. After the quick tour of the mall, I went down to the food court for lunch.

I picked a bad time for lunch because it conincides with office people's lunchtime. Crap. Busy queues everywhere. I scanned the food stalls for something to eat but when I decide on something to eat, the queue seemed like forever. So I did the opposite and settled for beef noodles which had 0 queue. Of course there's a reason for the lack of queue, my beef noodles only come with noodles and beef. No seasonings, no herbs and greens (which would've been perfect for a colleague of mine). For dessert, tow suan! My all time favourite Singaporean tong suey (sweet soup). It's starchy, it's fragrant, it's sweet, it has yu-tiao (fried flour sticks), it's perfect! Let's not talk about the beef noodle... When lunch was almost done, I started a tourist activity and pulled out the map from my bag. I plotted a course, a VERY ambitious course that would take me to ALL the tourist attractions closest to where I currently was.

Next stop, St Andrew's Church. I wanted to take some photos, but the front of the church was under construction. In the end, I didn't go in and didn't take any photos of the church, it wasn't that great anyway. On my course, the next attraction was the Armenian Church. I got a little lost at this point and ended up at the Singaporean Philatelic Museum, the Mason buliding and Singapore National Archhives building. Found out later that the church was just behind me. Heh.

I made my way to the Singapore Recreational Centre and on the way managed to take some photos of the City Hall, Parliament House and the Supreme Court building. I got to the centre, and it wasn't really that interesting, so I ended up at the Cricket Grounds an took photos of Tan Kim Seng fountain, the Genotaph and Lim Bo Seng memorial monument.

Checking my watch, it was already close to 2:30pm and my feet are beginning to hurt. I hopped over the opposite side of the road and took a photo of the statue of Sir Stamford Raffles. Went over to kepoh at the Asian Civilisation Museum near by. There was a gray Mazda RX-8 parked along the road nearby and another red Renault semi-van, which has been Ah Beng-nized...both of which I took photos. For memories, you know?

Towards the end of my journey today, I headed for the all famous Merlion Park. Which was a 20 minutes walk. The merlion looked smaller than I have expected. This is probably the second time I've been to the Merlion Park, the first time probably when I was a kid and I have little memory of. The merlion looks funny, water spouting out of its mouth. There was a little merlion behind the big one, what was the reason of this I wonder? Mommy Merlion and Kid Merlion?

2 more stops to go, my next destination was the Clifford Pier, where people can charter boats to go, I don't know. Go where, huh? I mean, it's Singapore? To Sentosa perhaps? Anyway, there wasn't much activies going on there, the interior of the pier was empty. You can see many old timers chit-chatting, some even taking a nap on the floor itself! Around this area, it was a good vantage point for taking nice shots of the Esplanade, One Fullerton (I spotted a Baker's Inn/Bakerzin here) and The Fullerton Hotel (which was oh so nice and enjoyable!). I forgot to mention that I took photos of the Maybank Towers, standing high among the other buildings owned by Banks in the financial district.

Time was almost 3:45pm. It was time to go to Lau Pa Sat Festival Center which is more or less a haven for food. When I got there, indeed, there were the many food stalls, selling various types of food. Vietnamese, Japanese, Korean, laksa, mee pok, beef noodles, the list goes on. What really caught my eye, was the dessert counter. I must have peanut soup (not cremé of peanut soup) which is whole deshelled and deskinned peanuts, cooked in a hot sugar syrup, made fragrant with pandan leaves. With yu-tiao of course. The wait for my turn to order was long! I waited almost 5-10 minutes to order my peanut soup which cost me SGD1.50 only. But the wait was worth it. I sat there all alone, eating peanut soup only. Yum, yum!

Tired and in need of a bath and rest I headed for the Scarlet Hotel which was only 15 minutes away on foot. I discovered a shortcut to my room. It was located at the entance of Desire, a little restaurant in The Scarlet where I could use my keycard to access the hotel rooms immediately, instead of having to walk to the lobby, walk in a long narrow corridor, take a lift, turn left and straight on. So complicated!

The shower was great and the bed even better. I wrote in my blog on Day 1 and just chilled out till M came back from work.

After M got back, we made our way to Restaurant Embers in Hotel 1929 which is thankfully nearby and within walking distance. It was nice of M to make a reservation for us because later that night, the whole place was packed! And most of the tables were reserved too! The decor of the restaurant was simple and very minimalistic, making use of wood and cushion-ny materials to soften the ambience. Light was dim, but no too dim until I couldn't see the untensils. There was a nice brown placemat made of cloth woven with heavy threads and cutlery all nicely arranged. The menu! I found the menu to be veered towards seafood as most of the mains and starters had alot of seafood ingredients in them. There was a choice of duck, beef tenderloin, quail and chicken for non-seafood mains. We ordered 1/2 dozen deep-fried oysters accompanied by a variation of 6 sauces for starters. I had the pan-fried Chilean seabass with grilled button mushrooms and smoked bacon bits in yuzu-butter something with truffle oil. M had the slow roasted rack of lamb with melted leeks and roasted potatoes served in some black sauce (I'm sorry, but I wasn't taking notes during dinner. It'll be rude. And I have a memory of a fish).

The starters came quick and on a white oblong plate, was 6 deep-fried breaded oysters, deep fried and smells fantastic! The sauces were in 6 shot glasses, with a tea spoon in each to scoop on the oysters. There was wasabi aioli, onions and sesame, peanut sauce and sesame, orange and sesame, Japanese mayonnaise and lastly Thai chilli sauced with fresh lemon grass. M took an oyster for me (pampered, leh?) and I started a nibble of the oyster with wasabi aioli. Very, very good! Wasabi flavour was just nice, not too overpowering. Next I tried onion sesame which was so-so, it tasted like my mom's sauce when she makes fried fish. Peanut sauce and sesame was good too, it was oilym, creamy and had a fine grainy consistency to it. Orange and sesame was probably my least favourite, the sesame flavour overpowers the citrusy tang from the orange. Actually, I only tasted sesame. Japanese mayonnaise is pretty standard fare, like those found in California Temaki. Thai chiili sauce was great too, the lemongrass flavour really adds a new dimension to boring ol Thai chilli sauce. Mm, yum yum, the 6 oysters didn't hang around for long!

My seabass came fist before M's lamb. It was neatly presented with the small chunk of fish sitting on a bed of mushrooms and bacon bits surrounded by the yuzu-butter sauce. I took my time, but not too long to carve a small piece of fish sans sauce and ate it. Mmm, the fish was pan fried to perfection, the flesh moist and tender and the delicious flavour of the seabass. The mushrooms and bacon were great too, a bit salty I have been warned, and the truth that is. The bacon probably lent to the saltiness. The yuzu-butter sauce tasted like melted blue cheese, displaying a nutty flavour and surprisingly salty as well. When all of them were mixed and tasted, it was good! The fish takes in the salty, nutty from the sauce so well and the mushrooms and bacon gave the dish more to chew on. Not too bad at all!

M's rack of lamb came just shortly after I got my fish. Her's looks wonderful as well, the lamb was neatly sliced uniformly and presented, the meat a nice hue of red, the leeks and potatoes smell nice. I was thinking that her lamb probably tastes better than mine. She gave me a bite and the lamb was so juicy and succulent and had just the slightest hint of muskiness as expected from lamb. The melted leeks were very flavourful and creamy and the roasted potato was powdery and creamy. The lamb was not too bad as well.

Ah, with the mains out of the way, it was time for...dessert! Scanning the menu for dessert, I saw this item, "Banana Tart with homemade Lavender Ice-Cream". This was what I ordered and we had to wait 20 minutes for it. But I tell ya, it was well worth the wait. When the tart arrived, the aroma of baked pastry was enough to make me hungry again. The tart was fluffy and crispy, the banana was baked just nice. Now the lavender ice-cream, that's something. Every scoop of ice-cream with my dessert spoon had a double effect on my senses, the calm aroma of lavender (which I love) and the taste of the lavender oil on my tongue. It's quite hard to describe it, but let me assure you that it's a delicious experience.To make it more interesting, the pastry was surrounded by a drizzle of pale green liquid. When tasted, I figured out what it was after a while; lemongrass sauce! So interesting! Add this in with the pastry, the ice-cream and the bananas, and you've got a great dessert.

We asked for the bill and it came up to under SGD100 for the both of us without VAT yet. Which is quite afforable still for fine dining, even more if you're earning in SGD. Service was very friendly and prompt. Ambience was great and the food was great. Embers gets my thumbs up.

Alot may think that the food portion in fine dining restaurants are too small to be taken for a nice dinner. I found myself stuffed to the brim last night at Embers. Perhaps I am getting old and cannot consume as much as compared to when I was younger. Or perhaps, that bowl of peanut soup was still taking up space. There was a teenage kid behind us that had the quail, pasta and was waiting for one more main dish!

Before the night ended, I met up with my old university friends of whom one I shared a home with before during my university days. I met D at the Tanjong Pagar MRT station (after walking through Tanjong Pagar Road where its sleazy looking pubs were peppered with what I suspected to be high class "escorts") and took a cab to Orchard Road where we met up with J at The Coffee Club next to California Fitness.

We chit-chatted on old times, even managed to bitch about other people we know in uni. I had a Hoeegarden and M had peppermint tea because the poor girl was having sorethroat after giving 5 presentations non stop! J had strawberry limade and strawberry shortcake, D had rambutan ice. Bizzare! We hung around the café for an hour or so and decided to head home as it was getting late, and M had another round of client presentations on Friday.

I was so glad when I entered the hotel room. So tired, so sleepy! My over ambitious plan to visit all the tourist attractions today gave me sore feet and sore calf muscles. Time to recuperate for tomorrow!

Singapore! Day 1

2005-09-02T14:00:00.000+08:00

31 August 2005

M has a business trip planned on the 1st and 2nd of September and I thought why not go as well? Take 2 days off and go. Nothing much is happening at work and I could use the distraction from the monotonous pace of working life. The plus point is, M's company is willing to foot the bill for accomodation as well as the bus fares to and from Singapore. So all I need to do is not spend too much during my 5 days and 4 nights trip to Singapore.

I started out early on Wednesday the 31st of August and headed to M's place where her mom kindly offered to take us to Menara Axis which was the pick-up point for the bus we chartered. We went with Aeroline. The bus was a double-decker bus and the seats as well as the interior was very clean so no complains there. The bus driver wasn't speeding as well so there was really no fear of an accident. When we arrived in Singapore, the bus dropped us off at the Grand Copthorne Hotel. We got a cab and got to The Scarlet Hotel which we will be staying for the whole trip.

The Scarlet was very interesting, this was my first time in a boutique hotel. Once inside, I got a very warm and plush feeling. The decoration at the lobby was themed scarlet (hence the name of the hotel) and jet black all softened with a grand chandelier, scarlet red carpets and scarlet sofas and matching scarlet cushions. However, the room we were given was still being tidied. So Angel, one of the consierge offered us drinks on the house while we waited for the room to be ready. I opted for guava while M went for orange juice. M decided to go explore a bit nearby and we checked out some nice boutiques and lifestyle shops before heading back to the Scarlet Hotel. There was an event going on at the stylish bar downstairs. I spotted a pretty looking girl, with full makeup on being accompanied by a stylist who's got a belt full of scissors and other tools. There's a pretty looking event organiser walking around looking for someone or something too. Turns out that Christian Dior is having a photoshoot session, and they chose The Scarlet Hotel for their venue. Pretty cool, huh?

The bellboy offered to show us the way to our room. We were guided through a long corridor and I mean, long and narrow with dim lights above us. We got to the room and were greeted by a nice clean bed and nice furniture, all covered with leather (PVC, of course) dark brown in colour. The toilet was nice! Marble counter, with cute rounded chrome taps, one for hot and one for cold, and a nice matching faucet. After going through the minibar and other stuff in the room I plonked on the bed and rested for a while. A few minutes later, we made our way to Maxwell Food Centre near by. It's a food area with lots of stuff to eat. It was close to 5pm when we were there, most shops were closing, which I deduced most shops do not do dinner. M tried chicken rice from Tian Tian Chicken Rice stall, which reputedly has a queue during lunch time. I tried it, and it wasn't anything to shout about. The chilli sauce was nice though. As for me, I settled for laksa (Singaporean laksa) which has a very distinct taste to it as compared to Malaysian Laksa. Ugh, it wasn't good at all. Can't fight the laksa in Katong!

With lunch/dinner done, we walked around ending up in Stamford Road. Here, we went into boutiques where M bought a nice dress in Lavender. Next stop, we walked to Raffles Building to walk a little there. Nothing much has changed since my last visit. M got some magazines and then decided that it was time to go back to the hotel for a shower.

Refreshed after a nice hot shower, we went out again to explore Club Street nearby where many trendy cafés and restaurants can be found. Most ad agencies setup their offices along Club Street as well. The buildings are mostly old heritage buildings, converted into an upmarket look yet managing to preserve the old antiquated feel. We also made a dry run to M's office in Far East Square, experimenting on the best route there. After getting a little disorientated in the square, we headed for The Scarlet hotel to get a good night's sleep.

From top: Macaroons, Chocolate-the & Epamay

I forgot to include in this entry, my visit to Canelé Pâtisserie-Chocolaterie along Robertson Walk today! Silly me! This little cafe which serves cakes and coffee and chocolates too. We took a while to select something to much on, because there's really so many cakes to choose from and all so interesting! M settled for Chocolate-the, which was a nice chocolate cake with a layer of crushed hazelnuts, raspberry sauce topped with Earl-Grey tea mousse and garnished with a fresh raspberry on top. The taste was heavenly, with each bite, a mix of creamy chocolate swirled with the hint of bergamot from the Earl-Grey tea mousse and the sweetness was balanced by the raspberry sauce.

I was more adventurous and settled for the Epamay (the waitress who served us doesn't like it, using the words "I hate it!"); layers of champagne jelly, crushed pistachio biscuits and some other stuff I can't remember :D Reminds me of a kueh lapis. The taste was quite something, the champagne wasn't too heavy, it was very light and the pistachio layer was very faint, yet noticable, the other layers lent to the texture of the cake, not making it too boring. I loved it! We got 2 macarons as well. Hazelnut cremé and rose flavoured. They were very generous with the hazelnut cremé which was very rich. Rose, which was my selection, was delicious. It was a melt in your mouth feeling and the rose flavoured cream in the middle was so distinct and flavourful. (better than Bakerzin's whose rose flavoured macarons are too faint till the rose flavour is almost negligible). It has a nice rose aroma to it too.

To end the tea treat at Canelé, I ordered a citrus hot chocolate drink, but they were out of citrus. I decided on tea hot chocolate then. The drink was thick, velvety smooth and the bitter chocolate aroma really tantalises the senses. In my first sip, the tea flavour wasn't noticable, the taste of the bitter chocolate was more apparent. On subsequent sips, the tea flavour was more noticable (maybe I didn't stir the hot chocolate enough?) Aha! In the end, I identified the tea flavour. Earl-grey! The unmistakeable bergamot flower flavour. After sampling the cakes and drinks in Canelé, Bakerzin has dropped to spot number 2. Pricing for the cakes and drinks are very affordable too, cakes averages on SGD5.50 per slice, my hot chocolate came to SGD4.80 and the macarons were SGD1.50 for rose and SGD1.80 for hazelnut cremé. I definately recommend it to anyone who is a fan of cakes and cafés. Even if you are not keen on sweet treats, give it a try, and you might just change your mind. I also left with a rose flavoured meringue. Hee hee!

Gah! So irritating!

2005-08-29T14:57:00.000+08:00

Another variant! So irritating! The Internet is really full of rubbish now...

I have so much time in the office to post stuff (including a combination of quick "ALT+TAB" key presses) in my blog now. The project I am on has stalled for so long, there's really nothing to do! But I've gotten word from my boss that work could be coming in soon, so my blog may not be so active soon.

Lazy Sunday

2005-08-29T14:37:00.000+08:00

Breakfast at Ms Reads, Bangsar Shopping Village

My Big Breakfast!

Yesterday was a very good Sunday for me. In the morning, I woke up slightly late and managed to clean up my toilet before heading to Bangsar to have breakfast with the WS, SY, WL, BY and M at Ms Read's Delicious Cafe at Bangsar Shopping Village. I ordered the Big Breakfast which comes with 2 scrambled organic eggs, a slice of toasted bread, sauteed mushrooms and cherry tomatoes and some streaks of beef bacon. I added in a serve of homemade baked beans and avocadoes as well. The order also comes with coffee or tea and fresh orange juice. The food? Delicious! The eggs were just nicely scrambled, not too dry. The mushrooms were tender and had a nice hint of garlic to it. The little cherry tomatoes were nicely done and I finished it all even when I am not a big fan of tomatoes. The baked beans were interesting and the avocadoes, well, avocadoley yummy. I had abit of BY's French toast with honey as well and it had the fluffiest texture ever! That's how French toast should be!

When breakfast was done and over and everyone was sipping coffee or tea, M and SY decided to get their nails done so they headed up for a session of nail treatment each. Which left me and WL and WS wandering into Toys 'R Us looking at toys. Boy, are they so advanced now. An hour later, much more wandering later, WL had to go to play futsal, leaving me, M, SY and WS to go to SY's place to check out her new rabbits, Moshi and Moro and also to check out her new Canon digital SLR.

M wanted to go get something from Midvalley Mall and we all went in SY's Honda Jazz. Which comes to the second best part of that day. SY was so nice to let me drive in her car! I know why the Jazz is worth so much. The drive is so smooth, and the suspension and handling nice and comfy. The pickup was good too, coming from a 1.5 litre VTEC engine, it makes negotiating the hilly roads of Bangsar easy. The most fun feature of the car is the sequential gears which you can control at a press on the steering wheel. It was fantastic! When up a hill, by switching it down to 2nd gear, you can feel the torque instantaneously. On straights, shifting from 1 to 5 on a straight road gave a very exciting feel when the accelerator is pressed. The engine did not sound loud, but it wasn't completely inaudible, it gave a very gentle purr when the accelerator was pressed hard. Nice, nice! The interior is superb too with mock carbon-fibre dash and finishing to give it a very sporty feel. As it wasn't my car, I didn't push it too hard, maintaining at an average of 60km/h to Midvalley and back.

When I got back to my Kelisa, I understand why now our local car companies still need to catch up in terms of quality. The car interior feels cheap and plasticy and the suspension not as comfortable and the transmission doesn't feel smooth too. These are little complains but the Kelisa still serves its ultimate goal, to get me from point A to point B. Hopefully, driving in a Perodua Myvi will be a better experience over the Kelisa.

To end the day, I had dinner with M's folks at Wong Poh in Sunway Mas. Ate like I never ate before and finished coconut water from one entire coconut. Feeling stuffed, I sent M back before taking the long drive back home dreading the fact that the weekend was slowly ebbing away...

Sushi Saturday

2005-08-29T11:44:00.000+08:00

I've heard of Sakae Sushi vaguely during my brief travels to Singapore last year. I was in M's car when I saw a flyer with a pair of wooden chopsticks in it advertising about Sakae Sushi in The Curve. So I suggested to my colleagues to try it out last Saturday.

Turns out that Sakae Sushi is just another conveyor belt sushi bars but with a difference. The decor of the restaurant was very contemporary and the seats and tables as well as the lighting has "designer" labelled all over them.

The most interesting aspect of the visit, besides the food was that each table had a computer terminal that allowed the customer to self order food. Just select what you want, click on the quantity to order and confirm the order. One negative point is that there isn't any way to track down what was last ordered, so expect some memory work when you use the computer to order. What even delighted me more was that, the computer system actually works! The food ordered were delivered to our table.

The food variety. It's pretty standard fare sushi bar stuff, nigri sushi, sashimi, maki rolls and temaki hand rolls. However, there is an outstanding amount of other types of food to choose from the menu! Such as teppanyakki, hot pots, tempura and so on. Ah, one complain which I have is that I had to pay RM1.00 for iced green tea. Isn't it standard that the green tea beverage is free? Besides, it's all powdered now anyway. No free refills for iced green tea too. In my opinion, for that RM1.00, it should have been free-flow of iced green tea for the whole meal.

The food quality, if compared to other conveyor belt sushi bars such as Genki Sushi and Sushi King was much better. The raw fish tasted fresh, the Ika I had tasted fresh and did not have the overly creamy texture, a sign of old squid meat. My companions ordered prawn teppanyaki and terriyaki chicken ramen where the latter could not make it past the edible mark. The California temaki I ordered was not too bad, nori seaweed still crispy however I was expecting more filling inside the hand roll. I tried some vegetable strips deep fried in batter with sweet sauce and it was a delicous yet simple side order. Because of my toe wound, I was not allowed to eat prawns. So most of my plates were pink and green in colour. Oh! I forgot all about the colour coding for the plates which denominates the price for each food type off the conveyor belt. Green plates are worth RM1.90, pink plates are worth RM3.90 and red plates are worth RM5.90. Pretty decently priced if you ask me.

I enjoyed dining at Sakae Sushi, the food was nice and the service was prompt. Price was on par. Only complain is the iced green tea. It should be free flow! The good companions made lunch at Sakae Sushi an even more memorable experience.

Did you know that I went back the very same day to Sakae Sushi for dinner with M? I was bragging so much to her that she had to go try too! That's the power of suggestion for you!

Cute kitty cats

2005-08-26T18:26:00.000+08:00

Well, not everything is soft porn. I found this picture of a fat cat so cuddly cute. The other cat is cute too!

~ MEOW!

Shots from a Japanese magazine

2005-08-26T18:19:00.000+08:00

I was having lunch at San Kei the other day with my office colleagues and I grabbed some Japanese magazines to read. Ok, look, I can't read Japanese. I am amazed at how these magazines, entitled "Spa" for men are borderlining on soft porn. Perhaps that's how the salarymen in Japan relax? With a good poster of a girl wearing bikini in the most obscene poses. Or. These totally bizarre illustrations I found and snapped with my camera phone as I was flipping the pages of the magazine.

Take a look and see!

How close can you go?

2005-08-26T18:18:00.000+08:00

Saw this while walking back from lunch yesterday. Parking lots are hot commodities in Sri Hartamas during workdays. However, both cars are illegally parked.

When I first started working in the Sri Hartamas/Mont Kiara area about a year ago, I would arrive at 8:30am and can find ample parking at the good spots which are located at the shoplots. Now, no matter how early I arrive. There will be no more parking left! Grr...

I always end up parking along the road closest to Projet which is not good because alot of heavy trucks loaded with building materials use that road. The trucks will normally leave a nice sheet of dust on any car parked along that road.

Well, I'm not paying for parking, so I guess I can't really complain. Well, maybe I CAN complain a little bit.

My visit to the GP

2005-08-26T15:25:00.000+08:00

I eventually went to the doctor upstairs to have my wounded right toe looked at. The doctor (or Happy Doctor as we dubbed her, as she's always cheerful when greeting us before consultation) did asked me how did I sustain this injury and when did it happen. I supplied her with the answers to her question. Next she said she's going to *use a needle to release some fluids* from my toe. The doctor examined the nail and said that it's still firmly intact, which means that it does not need to be surgically removed, which is GOOD!

She wasn't kidding when she produced a thick needle (for syringes, I think) and asked her assistant to get some gauze for her. Now she asked me to sit properly and did not tell me to relax. There was no anaesthetic applied. She began to drill the top of my toe nail with the tip of the needle. Slowly slowly... At this point, I was sick with constant anticipation, anticipating the moment when the needle bores through the toe nail and into the flesh underneath it. It didn't take long when the needle punctured the flesh and bring crimson blood started pouring out. I nearly lost my lunch. The doctor, sensing my obvious body spasm when the needle went through asked me if it hurt. I could only reply with a nausea-coated "...o-k...".

She then proceeded to gently squeeze out all the fluids that have been building up under the toe. When that was done, she made 2 more holes into my toe and repeating the process of squeezing out the waste fluids. At the end of the ordeal, I was given a course of antibiotics so that my toe won't get infected and some painkillers. No candy, though. But I think I preferred the painkillers more.

Today, my toe feels better and I don't have to walk with a limp or deal with the messiness when the yucky liquids flow out. I am glad I went to the doctor and can't wait for my toe to fully recover!

I managed to keep my lunch in my stomach.

Toe injury

2005-08-24T11:12:00.000+08:00

I've got a toe injury since last Wednesday. It's secreting some sort of liquid. I suspect it's blood plasma. My toe doesn't hurt as much, but it has a very irritating throbbing sensation sometimes. Probably caused by the buildup of fluids in the toe. I am considering consulting the panel GP upstairs and see if I can obtain some antibiotic cream for the wound.

On the good side, this is day two of me wearing slippers to work ;)

PHD in baby milk radio ads

2005-08-24T11:08:00.000+08:00

Have any of you heard or paid attention to baby milk powder (or formula) ads on the national radio airwaves? I was driving to work and heard this ad where feeding your child this product will enhance their learning capability. Why? Because according to the ad, the milk powder has SA, SD, TRA and is enriched with BDE, DFR, ERA, FGT, FR, and not forgetting FGM.

Come on!

Who the hell knows what those "nutritious" acronyms stand for? Will the average Malaysian mother even care?

"Eh, Mrs Chan ar, the baby milk powder ah, got FGT or not? What is FGT? Good or not wan? Cheap or not wan?".

Imagine that.

Stupid ad...

The Odd Couple

2005-08-24T10:58:00.000+08:00

Last Sunday afternoon, I had a chance to watch the female version of Neil Simon's classic "The Odd Couple" which starred Samantha Schubert who plays Florence Ung and Bernie Chan who plays Olive. I went with M and YS and some of their common friends.

At first I had to adjust myself to the whole idea that this is not a silver screening of a play, but in fact was all live. I blame this on my lack of indulgence in the performing arts, watching at least once a year.

The play was quite good, it tells the story about two friends, who lead completely different lifestyles staying together in a apartment in Bangsar under marital circumstances. It starts off fine at first, both Florence (who is a neat freak and exhibits a hint of obsessive compulsive behaviour) and Olive (who is a messy and carefree woman) see their relationship degenerating due to their conflicting characteristics towards the end. Bring in their girlfriends to throw in some humour, especially Vera (played by Elaine Daly) who is a typical Chinese bimbo to bring in the laughter to the whole production. Oh! How can I forget about the two Punjab gentleman who lives above Florence and Olive? They inject even more humour into the production. I found the ending to be a little sudden and unsatisfying. The play ends with Florence breaking from her routine-like life and living life without much elaboration. Much like an anti-climax to me. Perhaps the ending was not prolonged so to remove soppiness.

Overall, the actors and actresses both main and supporting were excellent. Samantha Schubert really has that English slang strong (yes, I know she is English) which was kinda sexy in a way and Bernie Chan was hilarious! Elaine Daly's part as a Chinese bimbo was funny as well. I will remember her as Vera talking to a guard for 20 minutes at Muzium Negara only to find out that it was a statue! Not to forget mentioning the two actors who played the Punjabs whose real and character names I cannot remember. :D

I thoroughly enjoyed the Odd Couple, however I wished that the ending could have been better.

Good English indeed!

2005-08-23T11:35:00.000+08:00

"...sucked into a maelstorm and betrayel". Sucked into a maelstorm and betrayel? Hah!

Spotted this when a colleague told me about this HK movie called "Ah Sou" that is directed by the infamous Johnnie To, who I can never understand what he's trying to convey in movies he directs. If there was even a point, I have missed it completely.

A good example is PTU, a movie which tells a story about a detective who has lost his police issued gun at night during a run in with crooks and how he has to recover the gun by any means necessary before day break. Sounds like good content, right? No. The movie transitions from start to finish in a difficult manner to follow and was threading on the brink of nonsense. I finished the movie and what a waste of time it was. Apparently, "Ah Sou" fares similarly. Triads that are too artistic to do anything, probably.

Rain in the morning

2005-08-18T18:31:00.000+08:00

This morning, I woke up to a slight headache and very moody weather outside, a sure sign of rain. True enough, when I was on the NKVE highway to pick M up, it was pouring cats and dogs. Such nice weather to sleep. Not nice when it's raining and you need to run off from your car to the office blocks. My shoes were drenched with water and till now, they're very uncomfortably damp still.

While at Auntie Nat's for lunch with 2 colleagues of mine, my nose suddenly bled profusely right when the bill was presented to us. No, the bill came to a very small amount really. Thankfully tissues were immediately handed out to me. When asked if a visit to the hospital was required, I said no. My blood was a nice crimson red. Is this normal? I don't remember blood being so bright. Perhaps I have too much iron in my body?

Yesterday, during futsal, my clumsy self kicked the ball at the wrong angle and hurt my right mommy toe. Now it hurts when pressure is applied and it's black in colour. I wonder if it will ever heal?

Looking inside my wallet, I only have RM6.00 left. Time to hit the ATM later. Stupid ATM machine is always out of the way. Stupid company I work in, I don't see why they can't transfer my salary to a bank that has more ATM machines around.

I found out early this morning (around 1:30am) that my stupid good for nothing ATi graphics card is the shits. It can't do anything! It can't even support Battlefield 2.

I was playing with widgets from Konfabulator (now a Yahoo! product) and it's awesome! I downloaded heaps and only ended up using the basic widgets: the clock and the calendar. Guess sometimes some things are just best when they're simple. There are heaps of widgets to download and install. Check out the website and see. My current favourite is the Chrome Clock widget and the standard Calendar widget. I put them on the top right corner of the screen. Well, sometimes on the lower right. Today I'll move them back to the top right corner again.

It's the Ghost Festival night today. It's a Chinese believe to go home early, as souls are released on this day from the gates of Hell for one day only. So they spend their time roaming the Earth. Happpy hour? Chinese folk will leave offerings in the form of food items and joss sticks for the souls to feast on. Oranges, tofu, biscuits (my mom used to offer little biscuits with hard sugar icing on top, I stopped stealing from the offering she gave to the souls after her telling me what this whole Chinese Ghost Fesitval is all about), steamed chicken are common food offerings.

With that I think it's time to give M a buzz and head off home. I can't wait to get out of these wet shoes!