Food Watch: Madam Kuan's Nasi Bojari is surprisingly good. The beef rendang was very tender and the taste 'just right', and while I don't usually like sambal, the prawn sambal was quite good. As for the fried chicken, well, you can never go wrong with deep friend chicken, especially a huge one ;p. But being the complainer that I am, for the price of RM 19.90, I would rather they give 1.5x the amount of rice, a bit more rendang, and perhaps another piece of prawn to add to the measly 2 in the sambal.


I also noticed that the lady sitting beside me was eating an enormous plate of Cantonese Fried Noodles (or Wat Dan Hor). While I'm usually against paying so much more for the same food that I can get outside for less than half the price, I acknowledge the difference between a expensive plate of Wat Dan Hor and a cheap one. The expensive one has more substance. And of course you're paying for the environment as well. Not to say that the cheap one isn't delicious of course. I must try that the next time I'm at Madam Kuan's, and that better be before I leave for Melbourne again.

Food Watch: I love Maggi Goreng. Transforming an innocent packet of Maggi into a plate of superb goodness, with each mouthful of flavour and texture exploding in your mouth, bringing you to eternity and beyond, and then back again, takes incredible skill. So good that I wanted to order a second plate, but unfortunately, I was too full.

My phone was paid the ultimate compliment when I brought it out to snap this photo:



"Aiyo, why you bring your camera wan.." -Wuan Zhu.

The custard cake that she made, with the Cadbury ice cream was divine. The sweets are fake though ;p.

Food Watch: A 6-inch Subway in Malaysia costs about RM 10. TEN. It's not even a foot long and it costs about 3 times as much as a random plate of char kuay teow or chicken rice. Now I'll never get to compare the Subway in Malaysia with the Subway in Melbourne.

It was Shealtiel's birthday dinner the other night, and I met up with some friends, some of which that I still keep in touch with relatively regularly, and others that I haven't met since Form 5, which was about 4 years ago! People like Vern Lynn, Victor, and Ooi Keong. Good to know that everyone is doing their own thing in their own ways and eventually becoming the good and respectable people that they are.















We drove down to Teluk Gong to have dinner at the Coconut Flower Seafood Restaurant.







See that fish? I polished nearly the whole thing myself because everyone else was too busy with the crabs ;p

And then we adjourned to Svenson's in Subang Parade to chill and have ice cream.














Some of Ooi Keong's pictures are awesome.









































Food Watch: Dinner was great and went down well. The ice cream afterwards was a good finisher to round off the night.

If I could think of a better title for this, I would

If this were a world of fantasy, we could pick our own heroes from movies to battle it out with each other, so:

Cicak Man

vs

James Bond

Who Would Win?

Food watch: I cannot see what the hype surrounding the KFC Zinger MaxX. For all purposes, its just a piece of chicken fillet, some lettuce, a piece of cheese, and some mayonnaise sandwiched between two buns. But I do like the packaging of the Zinger MaxX and the Cheezy Wedges.

Happy Birthday Lindsey

Today I inadvertently belatedly celebrated Lindsey's birthday without even knowing it! Jian Ming and the rest tricked me by saying they were going to 'meet up for lunch' but apparently they were also going to celebrate her birthday...*

*... ok wait, that's nonsense. What actually happened was we met up for lunch and also celebrated Lindsey's birthday which was on Monday which I didn't know about. There was no trickery involved.

Thus, Happy Birthday Lindsey. Woo hoo.















Hmmm, that looks like a cake..


Food watch: The Char-Kuay-Teow-in-disguise Vietnamese Seafood Fried Noodles that I had in DuViet in Bangsar Village was surprisingly fragrant, smooth on the tongue, and contributed – together with a slice of birthday cake and a cream puff – to a satisfied stomach. However, Yours Truly could not help but wonder whether spending the same amount on four KFC Zinger Maxxes would have been money better spent.

The Paradox of the Stage Magician

Magicians protect their secrets not because the secrets are large and
important, but because they are so small and trivial. The wonderful effects created on
stage are often the result of a secret so absurd that the magician would be
embarrassed to admit that that was how it was done.

-Alfred Borden, in The Prestige

I'm not the sort of person that minds knowing the ending of a story before I even watch it. I like knowing what's going to happen. I feel that, this way, I'm able to see many more nuances of the story while I watch it through the first time, and this, for me, is a wholesome and enriching way of enjoying the story, be it a book or a movie.

I watched The Prestige about 2 weeks ago, and I entered the cinema without any expectations whatsoever, namely because I did not know what the story is about. I left the cinema with a sense of awe, I thought it was a great movie, so great that I decided to go buy the book.

I finished the book yesterday, and I must say that The Prestige is one story that you absolutely must NOT know the ending, as it would spoil the show altogether.

Even though the movie was based on the book, the producers of the movie has taken many liberties to change the storyline so much that its a whole different story altogether, only keeping the main 'secret' intact. Major events happened differently, and even the ending is different. However, having watched the movie and thus knowing the 'secret' already, I have to say that the whole experience of reading the book has been spoiled for me.

Thus, I need someone who has not yet watched the movie to read the book and tell me what they think of it. However, in doing so, their experience of the movie, if they so choose to watch it later, will then be spoiled. And that would be a waste indeed.

Too much time on my hands

I wonder how long I can keep this up with random postings. Its been 3 days plus 1 already, and its still active.

So its the holidays and I've too much time on my hands. I've been surfing the net much more than I would have done normally, and I found out that Taylor's College (where I did my GCE 'A' Levels) recently staged The Mousetrap by Agatha Christie. Now that I've left Taylor's for about 2 years already, this shouldn't mean anything to me whatsoever, but coincidentally, I attended the same play by The Chinese Theater Group of Melbourne University recently as well.

Now I don't understand any chinese, and the play that I watched was in chinese but I still went because of 3 reasons. The reasons are (not necessarily in any order of importance):
1) My friend was the producer (or was it co-producer?) of the play
2) I'm a fan of Agatha Christie
3) They had English subtitles

I now want to say that the guy who was controlling the screen projecting the subtitles could and should have done wayyyyy better. Those of us who didn't understand chinese had no idea what was being said during quite a few moments in the play because he did not change the subtitles fast enough.

That being said, it was a great play nevertheless, although I was a bit disappointed with their ending as I felt it had a lot of loose ends unexplained and did not quite capture the essence and lacked the power of an Agatha Christie 'explanation', if you know what I mean.

I would have loved to have attended the play by Taylor's College, not because I didn't like the one that I watched, no, but I really would have appreciated the opportunitiy to see an interpretation of the play by fellow Malaysian students. There are some of the pictures of the Taylor's College play available here and although I do not know very much about taking photographs, and I do not know this guy, I must say that his pictures are awesome. A picture is worth a thousand words. How I would have loved to be there.

I don't really have any pictures of the Melbourne Uni play except for this crap one taken by yours truly....















...but this is a wallpaper taken from the Chinese Theater Group Website:










<--------Click to enlarge



And finally, (and I just can't seem to resist doing this), food! This I just had for lunch:









Sarawak Mee, from a foodcourt somewhere in Taman Desa.

Chicken soup is good for the soul

This translation is in the New Straits Times (p. 14 No to 'live' khalwat raid broadcasts') today:
"Gua cinta kat lu dengan seluruh hati gua" to "I love you with my whole liver". ;p

Somehow I don't think literal translation works very well here, if it all. Couldn't they translate it any better? This looks like something from Babelfish.

Anyhow, a random picture:















Chicken soup is good for the soul, yumm.

Just watched Amazing Race Asia. My first episode of Amazing Race in nearly 2 years. The emotions just rush back. Awesome.

Rojak

Wheeee rojak!!

Take two...

The traffic in KL is getting worse, especially on Federal Highway. Not that I'm not used to it already, but the jam starts earlier, and ends later. Today it took me 45 minutes to get from my place to Sunway Pyramid, at around 12.30pm, which is not even rush hour.



... and I was travelling at this speed:



:( Thankfully I brought a book with me ;p



Which brings us to what I wanna say today, that is, The Prestige is an Awesome movie. I say it again: The Prestige is an AWESOME movie. So awesome that I went out of my way to get the book by Christopher Priest to read and compare with the movie. I have only read 7 pages so far, but I have to say that I feel an awesome vibe coming from the book.

What I have read and finished these past 2 days however, is Train Man. I got the book on Saturday, and at night when I turned Astro to channel 39, lo and behold, they were showing the movie. After reading the book though, I declare that the book is much better than the movie. Absolutely amazing. The movie is good, but it just does not capture the emotions that is so evident in the book. And its not even a novel per se, but just a collection of posts on a online thread, about the protagonist Train Man trying to win the heart of a girl whom he saved on a train from a drunk. The problem is, Train Man is a geek, and has never had a girlfriend before (as appropriately put in the book, his age = the number of years without a girlfriend ;p). The posts are about Train updating his virtual friends as his relationship progresses and they offer him advice - some good, some awful.

Its a fast and fun read, and I'd recommend it to anyone who shares the same tastes as I do (;p), a warm hearted story about a nice guy loser going for a girl for the first time in his life :)




And finally, the meal of the day, Nasi Kerabu with something something (I forgot) at Laksa Shack, Sunway Pyramid:

Maybe I should start a blog

My mind is filled with a myriad of ideas for this blog, both grand and simple at the same time. However, I fear that it will, like many of my ventures, bomb out spectacularly (meaning that I'll keep this up for about 3 days and then go cold turkey completely).

Thus, I plan to start small and simple.

This is what I had for lunch yesterday. Plain and simple nasi lemak from a place called AJ Cafe in The Summit USJ. Not that they serve very special nasi lemak or anything, but I miss it from the days that I used to go there every week to play Magic: The Gathering and have this as a snack.















And for my friends who can't understand why I say I rarely eat out especially at mamaks, I'll just post a picture of my grandma's cooking here.



If I get something like that every night I don't think I need to go out to eat often ya?

Boo

Now this is how I think an April Fools' joke should be done.

Not sure if I pulled it off properly.

Do tell me if the effect wasn't quite as I had intended it to be.

Unfortunate that its 3 days after April Fools already.

Yah, but quit gaming? No way. At least, not just yet.

;p