Funny signs

Saw this in Istanbul, and thought that it's amusing.. I mean, a telephone (or telefon in Bahasa Malaysia) is not supposed to be on the floor?

Wireless Internet Connection!

Am in Istanbul right now holidaying.. hence the delay in updates to my blog.

Well, I wanted to update my blog on my first day here but I couldn't get connected. I hassled my friend again tonight for his help in helping me connect to the net, and surprise surprise he found out that he gave me the wrong password to connect to the wireless internet. What.....*?! And I was trying so hard over the last few days to connect to the internet.. sigh... wasted effort..

I will be updating my blog with photos of my Istanbul trip thus far, so come back in a few hours time k?

Vietnamese Pouch

Rummaging through my chestbox the other day, I found these Vietnamese pouches. Think it's made of cotton.

They are very nice, and new as I have not used it before. I bought it during my trips to Hanoi 2 years back. Mum has been nagging me to get rid of stuff in my room, and I only managed to part with this, out of the many other souvenirs still in the chestbox. (well, it takes time to part with one's treasure you know...?)

If you are interested to acquire the item let me know, I will let it go at cost price..

p/s: can anyone please teach me how to rotate the photos? It is rotated in my files, but after uploading, it was "un-rotated" (pardon my English...) again.

Mood: Tired, but excited about travelling tonight!

Nasi Lemak & Assam Laksa

If you have not tried the nasi lemak and penang assam laksa at Jaya Jusco, Mid Valley, perhaps you should.

It's not the nicest I have tasted, but I keep coming back for the assam laksa, for some reason. My other half will always think of this nasi lemak stall whenever we are in Mid Valley and will go for a meal.

Ok, photo time..!

Nasi Lemak Chicken Rendang

Penang Assam Laksa

Mood: Oh.. it's Monday tomorrow again..

Cute souvenir

We met up with some friends for dinner tonight, and one of them brought a souvenir from Hong Kong to pass to another friend.



It is in the shape of a pig, but it is so cute! Especially when you throw it on a hard surface, it gets flattened and will slowly return back to its original form. I couldn't get enough of it and kept throwing it around to experiment and watch it bounce back to shape.



Haven't seen anything like it in KL yet, but am sure this item will find its way into KL soon. Will definitely get myself one of these. It's a good way to reduce stress..



Hope you can see the photos and how cute the item is, you may need to use your imagination a bit as some of the photos are not as clear. It wasn't easy to capture the flattened shots as the flattened item bounces back almost immediately.



If you find the item in KL, let me know yeah?

NiuZeXui

If this title makes no sense to you, fear not.. This is actually name of the place I went lunch with my cousin today. It's actually pronounced as "Niu-Che-Shui" in Mandarin, which means 'Cow-Car-Water', translating literally. Of course it doesn't make much sense to most of us why the name, but nevertheless there is another place in Singapore, near the Chinatown area that bears the same name.


Anyway, back to lunch. It's the first time going to this place for me, so it took awhile to find this place. The place is still new, and many of the stores are not operational yet, but if this place takes off, then this would be THE place to be.

Some of the bigger names there are Starbucks and Big Apple Donut. Almost wanted to have doughnut for lunch.. We ended up at this small cafe called Ka Fei Tiam, which means Coffee Shop. Verdict of food and drinks: so-so.. value for $? Ok-lah..



Will go there again next time to explore other makan places. Watch this space..

Entrance

A shop selling wedding items

Starbucks on the left..

Mood: Excited, and totally motivated!

Collector's Item

We were talking about liquor collection, and mum mentioned she has a bottle of hennesy 30 years old! 30 years?! No joke.. Apparently this is now a collector's item, as this was one of the earlier batches of hennesy produced (according to mum).


The bottle of Hennesy looks nice, and mum was jokingly saying that she wants to auction it off at Christie's. Don't you think it looks a bit like a bottle of soya sauce iso of Hennesy?

Wonder what might be the market value of this bottle of Hennesy? Can you "guesstimate"?

Mood: Silence is not always welcomed..

Me trying out photography shots

Haha. Inspriration struck last night so I experimented with the camera, and the results... ta da!



I know, I know.. don't quit my day job.. but I kinda like the photos..

Mood: Ulcers are killing me, and I am demotivated.. and stressed..

Latest Bridge Score

Hi all,

If you have been following my posts you would know that me and 3 of my close friends meet regularly to play the game of bridge. We are very professional players (by our standard, of course.. haha..), to what extent you may ask. Well, we respect the game and the playing cards so much that we automatically will wipe and clean the table before we place our sacred playing cards on the table. And we try very hard not to stain the cards, we always joke that it's lucky to be our playing cards as we take good care of the cards.

Anyway, as the title suggest, I am here to update the latest bridge score as we near the end of our 2nd "buku 555". Without further ado.. let me present to you the scorecard:

ST - 461

CM - 426

KB - 412

WY - 425

And in case you still have doubts or think that I was joking about the "buku 555", here is a photo of it.. hehe.. :-)

Mood: Headache because of the intense heat outside the office and the freezing temperature inside the office.

We Worry Too Much..

In last week's Sunday mass,
Pastor touched on the topic of human
beings worrying too much.




According to a survey, humans worry about:
40% of things which will never happen
30% of things which happened in the past
12% - I forgot about this one, sorry...
10% - health problems
8% real problems

So according to Pastor, if we can change our attitude and mindset, we would be worrying at least 70% less! Why worry about something which will never happen? Why worry about things which have already happened in the past? True indeed.. but I guess it's easier said than done. I am trying to remind myself not to worry as much, and take each day as it comes, but sometimes the 'what ifs' are too great for me to resist thinking about them.

Don't Worry, Be Happy?

Mood: Sleepy and bored..

No title yet

Haven't thought of a title for this one.

Basically I have a few moments to share, and thought I can quickly do some updates here.

My labs have all been completed! Hooray...! Definitely something to celebrate.. I can look forward to going home at a more reasonable hour now. I remember half way through the lab, we thought that going home at 10pm or 11pm was early. Crazy isn't it? Shows that humans can be "conditioned" to behave or think in a certain way.

No photos to show today because... you guessed it - The camera is not with me, and I blame my recent lack of new posts entirely to the absence of the camera, and the person holding onto the camera.

Alright, nothing much to update except that I will be travelling (for work) alot from June onwards. Looking forward to them!

Api-Api

Do you know what is api api?

Apparently that is the original name of Kota Kinabalu, or in chinese Ya Bi. I never knew that! One of my colleague told me that even Chinese tourist knows about it, what a shame, being a Malaysian and not knowing about it.

So I looked it up in Wikipedia, and true enough it was there. I also found out that KK has a couple of other names besides Kota Kinabalu, Jesselton and Api Api. Let me extract that info and share with you here:

From Wikipedia:

Kota Kinabalu

Original names
Besides Jesselton, there has been a number of other claims as to the original name for Kota Kinabalu. The most popular, as mentioned above, is Api-Api, or sometimes simply Api, which is a Malay word meaning 'Fire'. It was apparently named as such by the mainly Bajau locals to denote the blazing of the British administrative office in Pulau Gaya instigated by Mat Salleh,[11] as well as other blazing incidents normally perpetrated by pirates. There were claims however that it was actually named after a nearby river called Sungai Api-Api. Another theory states that "Api-Api" is the local name of the common Avicennia tree found in abundance around the area.[12] Transliterated into the formal Chinese name of Ya Bi (亚庇 yà bì), the Hakkas here too adopted this name and some still use this name to this day.[13] Besides Api-Api, another suggested historical name was Deasoka, which roughly means "below the coconut tree" in the Bajau language.[12] The Bajau locals purportedly used this name to refer to a village on the southern part of the city which was filled with coconut trees. Another name was Singgah Mata which literally mean "transit eye", but can be loosely translated as meaning "pleasing to the eye". It is a name purportedly given by fishermen from Pulau Gaya referring to the strip of land of what is today Kota Kinabalu city center.[14] Today, all these names have been immortalised into names of streets or buildings around the city. Some examples are: Lintasan Deasoka, Api-Api Centre, Jalan Singgah Mata, and Jesselton Point.

Ah-so-neh... now I know.. You learn something new everyday!

Mood: Good!

Tai Ping Ho Chiak? Not...

Went to this restaurant in Sea Park yesterday night with 3 friends for dinner. It is located opposite the old Ruby Cinema, ame row as the KFC. Restaurant name is Taiping Ho Chiak, literally means Taiping Delicious, or so we thought.


Our unpleasant experience begun with 2 of us arriving first and choosing a 4 person table. The waitress came over and asked if we were ordering rice and dishes, and suggested we move to a much bigger table (enough for 6-8) as it would be more spacious. We were apprehensive about it first, but she said that it's ok since it was a rainy night and there were not many customers around. So we shifted table, and while waiting for our 02 friends to turn up, more patrons turned up. The lady captain came over and asked how many of us and wanted us to shift to a smaller table, I told her in an unfriendly manner that her colleague recommended this table to us. To cut the long story short, we changed to a smaller round table later (which was bigger than the one we first picked out). We got down to ordering our food after settling this issue.


We ordered a set menu for 3, comprising of the brinjal, soya pork and sambal prawn, and added acar and popiah. We also ordered herbal drinks. By this time, the restaurant was full, and crowded. Obviously shortage of manpower, the service level became unbearably slow. Our food took about 40 minutes to arrive, with no cutleries nor rice to go with the dishes. We had to ask for it. Half way through our meal, I thought something was amiss and asked for the menu, true enough, our set was supposed to come with soups but they have forgotten all about it. We highlighted it to them, only then did they bring the soup. Were the food delicious? It's alright, to the point of being so-so only, I mean I wouldn't drive all the way there just to have dinner. When we were almost done with dinner, we realised that our popiah has not arrived and again, had to tell the waiter about it. We wouldn't have missed anything great even if it didn't come because the popiah skin was too thick, and it was kinda bland.



My friends and I decided that we probably wouldn't patronage this restaurant again, not because it was that bad an experience, rather we just felt that we could be treated better elsewhere.

Clockwise from top left: Brinjal, Acar, Soya Pork and Sambal Prawn

Popiah

Taiping Ho Chiak?

Mood: :-)

0 KM to Kuala Lipis??

Have you ever seen something like this?

I was told that the location of Kuala Lipis is at the center point of Peninsular Malaysia, all measurements of distance start from here, hence there is the 0km signage, which is unique to this place. I mean, where else in this world would you find this?

I tried to upload a map of Peninsular Malaysia with Kula Lipis marked, but it was too small, doubt you will be able to see it. You just have to take my word for it, or google it.

Conteng..

I am still trying to decide whether I have mispelled this in Malay. Can't believe my Malay language has deteriorated so much..

Anyway I drooled this last night in the lab when I was bored.. I know it looks like a 3 year old's drawing.. but what the heck? We can have a good laugh at my lack of talent in this area.. if I can draw well, I would have become an artist.. haha..

p/s: Yes, that is Donald Duck on the right there.

Mood: Lousy, too many hands in the pot, spoiling the broth

Outrageous price for a packet of chips

I was at Starbucks today, and I had a frappuccino and a chicken sausage puff for lunch.
I wanted something to munch after having my lunch, and walked over to the counter to browse for items.

I saw some potato chips and grabbed one packet without asking for the price, thinking that it couldn't be more than MYR2-3 (or maybe even MYR4), I got a shock when the cashier told me that it costs MYR6.20 inclusive of tax! Turned out that the Kettle chips costs MYR5.90 per packet and with tax it's MYR6.20. I cancelled my order immediately, there is no way I am paying MYR6.20 for a packet of chips (unless it is Walker's Chips, read earlier blog on " My Favourite Potato Chips" if you are puzzled), I mean, my chicken sausage puff only costs MYR4.80 before tax. Would anybody pay that much to buy Kettle potato chips?

I wouldn't, period.

New Sakura - well worth it

Over the weekend, Abi and I went down to Singapore. We went out to New Sakura with his sister and family to New Sakura for dinner. New Sakura is like Saisaki in Malaysia, or Sakae Sushi but buffet style.


For SGD24.00++ (additional SGD2 for public holidays and weekends), you can eat all you can! The variety is good, and the sashimi is so fresh!


We had a really good time enjoying the food, it was simply fantastic! I highly recommend the place for dinner. Try the durian puffs and the cheese cakes while you are there, fabulous. I can go on and on about the delicious food but I shall not, instead I will post the photos here, you can judge if the food looks nice enough for you to try out the place.


I will definitely go back there the next time I am in Singapore.

Cheese Baked Oyster

Mussels

Herbal Prawn

Durian Puffs

Cheese cake, Layer cake, mango cake, moichi and chocolate

New Sakura restaurant

Mood: Waiting to go home.. tired already..

Turkish Delight 2

If you were reading my previous blog, and thought that 11.30pm was late for leaving the lab, I left at 2.00am and 1.30 am for the next two days. The good news is that that lab has ended, the bad news is that the other lab was extended so it's never over until it's over (will it ever be over?) And there are still more labs to come till early May.. someone help me.. the hours are insane, and the labs are intense.



Oops, I am way off topic, anyway I just wanted to post the photos of more Turkish Delight given to me by my colleague based in Turkey. Yes, the same one who let us tried the earlier Turkish Delight. This one is slightly sweeter, so I like the first one more. Heard that there are many flavours, and pistachio and chocolates are nice! When I do visit Istanbul, I will make it a point to try them.

Someone actually commented that it looks like something which has gone bad.. haha.. think it does look like that in a way, but I assure you that it tasted good and I didn't have any stomach upset. Apparently if you keep it in the fridge, you can store it for 1 year!

Mood: Can't wait to go home..

Turkish Delight

Lab is half way through, last night was the latest where I left work at 11.30pm while my lab members were still hard at work. I felt bad for leaving earlier but I need my sleep, and I saw no reason for me to stay at the lab further since they were basically documenting items into spreadsheets and powerpoint. (ok fine it's just my excuse for wanting to leave..)

Anyway one lab member from Istanbul brought with her some Turkish Delight, and I was pleasantly surprised as we didn't expect it. My cousin was telling me so much about it that I felt privileged to be able to try it in Malaysia. If I do visit Turkey, I would be trying it again because it tasted really nice, not too sweet, just nice. Perfect for a tea time snack or for coffee breaks.

I told my cousin I took a photo of the Turkish Delight and will be posting it on my blog, and she almost wanted to kill me over the phone. I am still doing it.. hehe..

Well, here it is, Turkish Delight.

p/s: cousin, please don't kill me.. hehe.. and thanks to abi who corrected the typo error..

Mood: So sleepy...

Escaping from the 8x5

What's an 8x5 you ask?

It's the small little cubicle which you head to, normally 5 times a week and officially 8 hours a day. Yes, it's your work station, work area, work place, whatever you call it. Why do I call it 8x5? I don't really know the exact measurement of the cubicle, but I just made up the length and width and call it an 8x5. Well, currently I do not favour my 8x5. Actually I don't think it is the cubicle, it's probably more of the nature of work that I am currently handling.

I very nearly ran away from work today, to avoid the task at hand. But I didn't in the end, I stayed put and instead bought a big packet of potato chips to munch while trying to absorb what all my datas are trying to tell me. This diagnosis and prognosis thingy is not easy man...!

Countdown to lab session, 5 days and I've got 4 routes to do. Man this is going to be difficult, and tough.. This is the time to ask for divine intervention and reinforcement.. Help!

Lord, please help me with my data analysis and prognosis and super reading power and microsoft office skills and stamina and.. and.. and...... could you just make the labs disappear instead? Amen...

:-)