I WANNA GO SOMEWHERE FOR RAYA

So says the subject of the email thread that was initiated by lad last month in preparation for the long weekend.

So in the email discussions throughout August it was planned for a hike to Chiling Falls (at least we think it was Chiling...we opted out off as we already went hiking with them a couple of months earlier and didn't feel like going hiking again so soon), a day for lunch at Coliseum and boardgaming, a barbeque and potluck dinner and a trip to Sunway Lagoon!

Gosh.

We didn't even need to pack or get stuck in any sort of traffic jam.

So for us the holidays started with a trip to Coliseum for their Chateaubriand Steak. It's been a while since we've been to Coliseum, and fortunately for us the place was opened on the first day of Raya itself! A good start to the day with steak and beer.

After that it was over to esteban's house for some boardgames - we tried this game called Wits And Wagers, where players try to answer American trivia and then bet on the answers they feel closest to the actual answer. All the answers were number based and you'd to bet on the nearest answer without going higher than the actual answer. Mechanic-wise the game was okay, being short with only 7 questions, but American trivia can be a tad limiting for us over here.

After Wits And Wagers, we moved on to That's Life! It's been quite a long time since we've played this game and somehow there wasn't that sense of analysis paralysis as we used to remember from our early games...

After That's Life!, lad decided to start his test-run cooking of siew yoke for the upcoming BBQ. Lad paid RM60 for two large chunks of raw pork from Tesco, and rightly so wanted to test out the recipe he found first. After an hour of roasting in the oven, with some airing now and then and lots of getting rid of the oil that seeped out, lad had a winner recipe! It was absolutely crunchy and yummy! So good, that before anyone thought to take a photo the entire piece was cut up and finished in minutes.

Barbeque night was another night of fun! This time it was decided that everyone had to make something for the potluck - no one was to bring along take outs. We suppose quite a number of people were adverse to KFC. Still, there was quite a lot to expect! There's the chicken wings, sausages and meatballs provided by otousan, the host, lemon provided a carton of beer, the Chief made soya cincau and a jelly dessert, NJAPF brought a salad with chicken in her special secret sauce, 'Vin brought borsch soup, Puddy made nanchos with melted cheese, Stewardess Sal and her Banker Boi supplied lemang with beef and chicken rendang, lad brought more siew yoke, esteban made ravioli, and Stewardess Sue and her friend made a banoffee pie. Us? We scrounged Tesco, MBG and Cold Storage for assorted fruits to go with some Tip Top ice cream.

The verdict by the end of the party?

1. Everyone bringing something tends to lead to a LOT of food. So much that some force feeding may be required.
2. 'Vin says NO MORE SOUP. This because the previous potluck saw a pot of spinach soup left untouched and this time because 'Vin inadvertedly made two big pots of rather sweet borsch soup.

By 10pm everyone was dead tired and the party ended.

And next morning, Sunway Lagoon!

It's actually our first time at Sunway Lagoon. To be exact, our first time visiting the theme parks in Sunway Lagoon as opposed to going there for some event (and Sunway does well when it comes to providing food and entertainment for their events!). Only 6 of us ended up going: lad, esteban, otousan, 'Vin, lemon and us - in this case six was the optimal number: 2 lockers can fit our belongings, the Congo Ride (a water slide where you slide down on a mat) had 6 lanes, allowing us all to race each other down, not to mention an even number meant we could share tubes to ride down the Phyton Ride.

We spent the day at the wet park and at the wildlife park after that (because it was the nearest, we suppose). We wouldn't have mind spending the entire day at the wet park if they had had more rides, rather than 3 main rides. Since we weren't around the wave pool at the right time to experience the wave (instead we caught sight of couples lined up along the wall face sucking like there wasn't anyone else there) we found ourselves at the wildlife park watching the interactive wildlife show (where a macaw did tricks, a wee German girl got to hold a phyton and kissed it, and everyone wanted to touch a rather fat civet cat, including us), walked about looking at all the animals and then spending half an hour hoping to see the arapaimas being fed (we left in the end after a no-show by the fish).

Left around 4ish as everyone only had breakfast and were starving by then. Will we go back again? Not too sure. The last time everyone else went there were years ago, we're thinking it'll be years again when we would go there again, and it would probably with everyone's children by then. Lunch/Dinner was at Hartz Chicken Buffet (again, this is another place that would be visited once in a few years somehow) before everyone left for home.

On the weekend the Chief and us visited the IT Fair at MidValley (for the auctions again, and once again left empty-handed), did some looking about at Low Yat and Sungei Wang and Pavilion, watched Final Destination 5 in the cinema followed by Final Destination 1 and 4Bia back home,

Come Sunday, the Chief and us celebrated the last day of the long weekend by heading down to Klang for a bah kut teh breakfast.

Reaching home we spent the morning eating John King egg tarts and eating soya cincau ice lollies (the Chief had an extra tin of cincau and carton of soya milk!) while finishing up Final Destination, which we initially only intended to watch the beginning (we had an aha moment watching Final Destination 5 and just wanted to check something) but ended up watching the entire show.

We'd suggested tapau-ing some pork home for lunch with Nissin noodles, but decided against OD-ing on pork and so ended up with herbal salted chicken from Damansara Uptown instead. The Chief deboned the chicken first while we cooked the noodles, the Chief was the lucky one with the wishbone, and yes, there was excess chicken so we packed the remaining chicken for breakfast the next day.

And now...after almost a week on holiday, the backlash is TERRIBLE.

Tea Snob

Us. Admittedly.

All thanks to the Chief who graciously procured for us an electric kettle for our own use in the office.

And it's not as if we have no hot water in the office! There be one of those filter machines that dispense both hot and cold water, not to mention there are the coffee machines that we could just use to heat up water in case the filter machine is switched off. However, being a tea snob, we would prefer to use boiling water for our tea.

Yes! For tea is to be steeped for 3-5 minutes in boiling water! After which, the leaves are removed and we will add in honey and a lemon slice!

Well. We have ran out of tea leaves and will have to make do with tea bags of tea dust at the moment, and the lemons here do not look appealing, hence we currently only have our tea with leatherwood honey, which is delightfully flavourful.

Now if only the steam rising from the kettle will stop worrying us with setting off the fire alarm somehow (memories of how sensitive the fire alarms were in James Blyth Court come back to mind!).

The Year Of The iSlow

This weekend proved to be somewhat tiring, or perhaps we're slowing down, but it's certainly noticeable that the moment we reach home and head up to our bedroom, we can actually just lie in bed and fall immediately to sleep without changing or taking a bath.

Friday night saw us around Cheras after work, so we decided to head to Leisure Mall for our workout and dinner before heading to Old Town Kopitiam Cheras for some boardgaming. We'd no problem getting to Leisure Mall due to some handy directions on taking the back roads rather than going through the main highway, but it was our journey from Leisure Mall to OTK that was a navigating nightmare!

We left Leisure Mall at 9pm only to reach OTK at almost 10.30pm!

Got home around 2.30am, knocked out straightaway when we laid down in bed.

Saturday now, we had the Chief drop us off at Midvalley for a quick look-see at the PC Expo (the Chief already visited the Expo on Friday didn't join us as it was too crowded).

Less then an hour and we were out of there, having made a quick skim and taking catalogues of what we were interested in. Then we headed down to Subang for pork noodle at Pomander before mooching over to Subang Parade, where we managed to get a pouch for our iPhone and a present for our niece (a good shopping experience aided by a bargaining-savvy Chief!).

After that the Chief brought us for dinner at Betty's Midwest Kitchen at Aman Suria!

There's something about us eating at such porky establishments...prior to this we dined at Blue Cow Cafe at Plaza Damas, and now at Betty's Midwest Kitchen, we order as if we were never coming back to the establishment and wanted to try everything in one sitting.

Hence we had the Classic Meatloaf as recommended, the Pig-In-A-Blanket, Crispy Bacon, the Roasted Chicken and Onion Soup, and the 'Dog Food' (fries in cheese and gravy). While we had to wait some 10-15 minutes to get a seat, our order was taken while we waited and upon sitting at our table all the dishes came almost immediately! We suppose most of the dishes were already prepared and just needed some heating up - especially because of the bacon.

The bacon turned out dry and crispy and not really salty, while we were actually expecting fried oily bacon with the fatty bits still on it, the whole thing crispy and oily and salty enough to cause our arteries to panic as we enjoy the sinful bit of meat.

Stuffed ourselves silly and, once home, napped a while before summoning up the willpower to go shower and change and catch up on our Cityville before sleeping.

And on Sunday, we had two performances to attend! First up, the Tribute To John Williams by the MPO.

A great and lively performance! Theme music from Superman, Star Wars, Indiana Jones And The Raiders Of The Lost Ark, Memoirs Of A Geisa, Close Encounter Of The Third Kind, Hook, Jaws, Yes, Georgio and E.T., and for the encore, the march from 1941.

Then we'd to rush off to find St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church after that! Just earlier last week we came across a Facebook event for a performance of Faure's Requiem, and we were keen to watch the performance. Turns out that it wasn't just any performance, but a tribute to the late Armando Chin Yong too, performed by Cantus Musicus.

We had some issues, although we're not a professional singer or musician...small issues like certain Latin pronunciations and the little mishap during a repeat performance of Agnus Dei at the end of the performance, where the organist and the sopranos/altos got jumbled up due to a miscue. The biggest issue we had was with one of the tenors, whom we nicknamed Mr Expressive. His face! Goodness he had his eyes opened wide and focusing so hard on the conductor, and his mouth always forming an O either 2 beats before he's supposed to sing (so we know when he's going to sing if we didn't already know the requiem) or when he's pronouncing certain words. It's amazing, even when pronouncing the 'em' in 'requiem', his mouth forms an O.

His singing was good but it was very, very distracting watching him. It was better after we took off our glasses.

Immediately after the performance it was back to MidValley for the auctions at the PC Expo! Arrived just in time for the auction, and was only interested in the bidding for the Acer desktop, the Dell laptop, the Garmin Nuvi 1350, and the Samsung Galaxy Tab. In all cases we didn't win the bid, although we were close with the GPS as it was within reasonable limits (we stopped at, what, RM460 for the GPS, which we were told costs RM545?).

This time we weren't as tired as the past two days, but still we found ourself dozing off the moment we were horizotal!

This may be the year of the iPad 2, but it's also the year where we start slowing down!

Thirty Years, Birthday Peers

And the birthday parties this year begins with the weekend out with the TTDIans, celebrating the birthdays for the January babies! This time we celebrated our birthday together with Puddy and Steward 'Suf, at Chilis BSC.

Now usually Chilis is a bit...difficult when it comes to group celebrations because of their reservation policy - from what we understand they have a no-booking policy and the entire party has to be there in order to be seated. And not everyone will arrive exactly on the same time (yours truly here is a prime example of not being able to arrive punctually, sad to say, even with the disciplined Chief who hates to keep others waiting trying to get us going!) because, say, some unforseen circumstances or other. But luckily for us Chilis BSC allowed us to be seated with just five people, half our party! Thumbs up for them for this.

It's been a while since we had dinner at Chilis, especially their fajitas were yummy - our only issue is that they only supplied three pieces of fajitas to eat our mushrooms and chicken with. Instead of being able to apply a sensible amount of chicken strips, mushroom, sour cream, diced tomatoes etc and eating it something similar to a popiah, we end up stuffing it to the point where it's more like we're eating a taco.

Cue Taco Neck Syndrome.



After dinner it was off to George And The Dragon for more drinks!

Unfortunately as some of the other tables were booked we had to make do with a couple of tables against the wall, where, while it could easily seat the twelve of us, was not well ventilated and the lot of us were feeling stuffy not before long, making it hard to chill and enjoy our drinks. Speaking of drinks, we'd the Soft Snake Bite Black, a mix of (if we're not wrong) cider, Tiger, Blackcurrent and Pernod and worked well for us after our meal.

Thus the card-and-present giving ceremony was brought up to speed, starting from the youngest: Puddy, followed by Steward 'Suf and then us (ah, so far we're destined to be the first to have his birthday in any group...).

What did we get?

A new home!

Gosh, we were so excited! Honestly, we just recently went to pay a visit to Setia Alam, and they've got a spanking new development coming up that looks very nice on 3D rendering as well as a rather attractive concept to said development, we're so tempted except for the RM1.6mil+ price tag which will put a crimp in our spending power. Scratch that. It'll put a total STOP to our spending. Period. Here's chicken rice for lunch every day.

Anyways, back to our new home!

It's much bigger than our current home indeed!

And it's twice our current home!

So big that we can actually fit our current home inside!

See since our last Sporeland trip recently we've been toying with the idea for a bigger Crumpler, one that will be able to fit in our iPods (Touch and Video) and a X-mini speaker. So that we don't have to rely on our earphones. Yes, it would be a tad obnoxious if we'd plugged in a X-mini to our iPod Touch, prop it up on the table and proceed to eat lunch while watching some noisy show at near-full volume without a care to what everyone else thinks. But it would be okay if we were in some quiet place or for some music to go with a spontaneous party! All right let's not try to justify carrying an X-mini around...

The birthday babies also got Sticky candies from Germ! Brill stuff.

We were seated in the corner dominated by iPhones, hence there were talk of what's new in apps and games. And the highlights?

Run Like Hell!



It was funny, but the slow response of the gameplay was a bit of a turn-off.

Then we moved on to watching Talking Carl fight with each other!



All in all, it was a great time spent and, well, to all the TTDIans (interestingly it's not as if everyone stays in TTDI), we're gonna be welcoming you all to Club 30!

Thank yous going out to our Chief for organizing this, and to lingo, NJAPF, lad, esteban, 'Vin, otousan, Germ, Stewardess Sal for being part of the celebration, and happy birthday to Steward 'Suf and puddy!

Chief Celebrations 2010: Belated Dinners

Admittedly this year celebrations for the Chief's birthday wasn't as well-planned out as before. Firstly the (sort of) last minute plannings to celebrate with friends, and we had not taken the Chief out to celebrate alone yet.

Our bad was in always wanting to make stuff like the Chief's birthday celebrations a surprise and all that, and although this year we'd thought not to make the celebrations with other known, we'd sort of neglected to inform the Chief about plans for birthday celebrations with just the two of us.

It goes to show, if one is to plan a surprise dinner for two to celebrate an important occasion like the other half's birthday, one really should not leave it for far too long. Like, three weeks too long.

The topic did arise at one point, and we admitted that we meant for a surprise dinner for when after the Chief's allergies got better (no, we didn't forget!). And the Chief mentioned that there was no need for the dinner already since it's already so long after the actual birth date.

If we were dense we would have nicely just left it at that an incur future wrath, we suppose. But we were actually thinking of where we could bring the Chief, someplace the Chief's not been before and serves pork (for now, that's one of the safe dishes which wouldn't knowingly aggravate the Chief's condition as we know it).

And then we had it.

And so before October ended we casually mention to the Chief that we haven't been to Sri Hartamas in a while, and wanted to eat someplace there, and no, it wasn't Souled Out. The Chief could have suspected that this was the long-overdued birthday dinner, or not, but it got the Chief thinking as to what is there to eat in Sri Hartamas.

A shot in the dark: "I don't like Korean food ah."
A non-committal reply: "No, it's not Korean."

And given the restaurant's location, the Chief never knew where we were going. Initially the Chief thought we really were going for Korean after all, although the only thing Korean at the block of shops we were on was a Korean supermarket, and what stumped the Chief most was when we reached Al-Rajhi Bank.

Riblees, nicely situated upstairs from the bank is quite a good place to surprise someone for dinner, provided that someone doesn't know about the place. A change from Checkers, also full of porky dishes, and a darker, cosier setting.

We sort of refrained from asking the establishment to prepare our table with candles and flowers and all that. Helium balloons and confetti included.

It was just too bad that, considering that we've not been there for the last couple of years, we couldn't recall what was recommended. We think the Classic American Babyback Ribs and the Roast Wild Boar Ribs were among those we thumbs up years ago, and after asking the waitress to give us a recommendation we ordered the Classic American Babyback Ribs and their special of the month, the Jamaican Jerk Style Roast Pork.

Both were good but we think we've been spoiled by Checker's Pork Chop. The barbeque sauce for the babyback ribs reminded us of Tony Roma's, but better.

And just to make sure the Chief knew it was a belated birthday dinner rather than just some random inclination to eat out, we had the waiter bring out a slice of their Oreos Ice Cream Cake with a candle. The cake, now, that was splendid. And a generous slice to boot!

We certainly saved our own hide in the end, but next year we've got to buck up! Candlelight dinner!

Casinos & Universal Studios, Sporeland Style

So during the end of last month we made a trip down south to Sporeland with a few things in mind, and among the planned activities were paying a visit to the two new casinos and Universal Studios! Even though we'd planned for a nice long weekend there, the days were packed with walking and commuting and games from morning till late night, that we were quite grateful that we'd arranged our trip to leave on Monday night (by the overnight train, of course) and arrive back on Merdeka Day, giving us a day of rest before starting work again.

Imagine. By Monday our legs and feet were aching even after a leisurely stroll and by noontime we were considering heading back to our sis' place to rest instead of going about shopping. If we stayed till Tuesday, and headed back on the overnight train and arrived home on Wednesday, we would be in no condition to do anything productive.

So anyways Thursday night we made our way down, arrived in Sporeland on Friday morning, headed to settle our luggage and freshen up and our sis' place before heading out to have lunch at Kuishin-Bo. We were starving when we left our sis' place that we would have stopped for lunch at Suntec's Food Republic, where we did stop for a while to take photos of the decor.

If we recall this is not the first time we'd noticed the library-like decor at the Food Republic, but it's the first time we're paying attention to it. The Chief hurried ahead to leave us alone to suaku take photos like some awestruck tourist.

Propaganda attack: Dollar for dollar, you can enjoy a nice Japanese buffet lunch for $20-something, unlike back here where you have to break a fifty, or two.

Kuishin-Bo Suntec had this lunch offer where if you're done eating in under an hour, you pay only SGD21.90++, otherwise it's SGD28.90++ (we think we got the prices right). Certainly had our fill as we were already starving! A lesson learned here is to avoid the little chocolate desserts if we plan to make full use of the buffet spread in under an hour.

A leisurely walk around Suntec City (and our first hands-on on a working, jailbroken iPad) and Raffles after that, and by night we were back at our sis' for boardgames with the bro-in-law and his group of friends.

Till...3am.

Saturday noon was off to Marina Bay Sands! Only, we forgot to bring our passport along, and so wasn't allowed entry into the casino. So we walked about the shops, took photos of the rain oculus, and like many other people, threw coins. Except we weren't throwing it at the eye, but trying to roll the coin in a spiral towards it. Fail.

Then later inside we saw the rain oculus from below. There were boat rides going on, and we wondered if anyone in the boats got hit by coins (honestly we keep picturing rich tai-tais screaming in pain as a coin pierced through one eye). The Epicentre there was full of people so we didn't get another chance at the iPad, and so we made our way to Orchard before heading back to get our passports. The night before's gaming session told on us as every time we commuted or whenever we sat down to eat, we would go into standby mode now and then. The Chief, patient martyr, let us rest and either played Mega Jump on the iPod Touch or looked out for when to get off the MRT/bus.

The Marina Bay Sands Casino was nice, and quite modern in some ways too - like for Baccarat Punto Banco, the croupiers at Genting Resorts World had to key in the results, while in Marina Bay Sands the system somehow catches the results (we're not sure how, the Chief suggests via CCTV) and displays it automatically without the croupier doing anything. After about nearly an hour on the main floor, we explored the upper floor and discovered the non-smoking section. Bah.

As we had to make our way back to get our passports, we ended up at Marina Bay Sands rather late, and so left rather late too (no, we missed out on heading up to see the infinity pool on the rooftop) and had to catch a cab (fairly quick and easy from the hotel) back. Where we found our bro-in-law and friends having another night of boardgaming.

We showered, played Starcraft a while on the bro-in-law's pc, joined them for a round of Agricola when they started a new round, and ended up sleeping at 4am.

Sunday was to Universal Studios! Initially we planned to go Universal Studios on Saturday but they were sold out for then, so Sunday it was. And since we were going to head on to the Resorts World Casino after Universal Studios, we packed along an extra shirt, predicting our time at Universal Studios to be rather sweaty.

The Universal Studios Globe.

And the Store, where we spend a long time inside but ended up with not much.

We'll say that Universal Studios Singapore is actually not that large if compared (rather hazily due to poor memory) Universal Studios LA, but it worked to our favour as we could cover everything in one trip. We arrived at noon (thanks to yours truly who stayed up late gaming) after brunch, and managed to go for all the rides, save the kiddy ones found at the Madagascar and Lost World bit and the Battlestar Galactica rollercoaster as it was under maintenance. If we arrived when the gates opened, we could probably fit in extras like taking photos with characters (we'd only managed to get photos with Beetlejuice and some Egyptian guard as it was) and seeing a few other shows.

What we really liked about Universal Studios was how thematic it was, down to the small details! Umbrella stands were made to look like a barrel to hold weapons in the Far Far Away, in the walls of the Lost World you see amber with mosquitos in them. Of course, if you never watched the shows, you might not appreciate some of the details, but there's lots of other stuff like how toilet signs and decor differ depending whether you were in Madagascar, Far Far Away or in Ancient Egypt, that help make you feel like you're in some fantasy land and more importantly, feeling like a kid again.

We went trigger happy with the camera taking photos when in Far Far Away!

And the stuff we came across the Lost World were a tickle, from their clothes shop...

To the refreshment counter!

When we arrived at Ancient Egypt, we were quite taken in with the effort in making monuments and impressively large statues. And then we came across guards on stilts that reminded us of fauns and satyrs.

We'd no idea who he was suppose to portray, since he was off duty and was heading elsewhere ignoring a gaggle of girls who chased after him.

We didn't find anything we'd buy from the souvenir shop, and we wonder who will actually buy this throne for SGD2,800.

We went crazy at Sci-Fi City's souvenir shop buying a few Battlestar Galactica themed souvenirs. Didn't get anything that read What The Frak, though. There's more souvenirs we're keeping track off that we didn't get this time, well, because we thought the Universal Studios Store near the entrance would have all the stuff we might come across in the other stores at their respective areas (obviously not). Good thing we decided to get the BSG souvenirs when we did, otherwise we'd have to run all the way back to Sci-Fi City to get them!

After Universal Studios, our legs needed a rest and we headed for dinner, and then we were off to the casino! A quick stop at Bread Story just outside the casino showed that thematic settings didn't just stop at Universal Studios...

Resorts World Casino doesn't have that posh feel that Marina Bay Sands has, as seen by the less formal way the gamblers dress, but at least upon entry we were in the non-smoking section. And we came across the Star Wars: Light Side slots machine there! Genting has the Star Wars: Dark Side slots, and we weren't sure if there was a Light Side version till then! And we won SGD50 playing it!

That night, once home, we played Street Fighter 4 with the bro-in-law until somewhere 2am, we think. After that, we helped him get his iPad up and running, which he bought that day and left to charge till night. There was the installing of iTunes and setting up and account which took a fair bit of time, and after that we left him to play with his new toy while we went to bed.

Come Monday, it was supposed to be a rather free-and-easy day and the Chief took us around town. First up, to Sporeland's Ikea for a look-see. We haven't been there for some four years now since our sis took us there once, and remembered it differently (perhaps because our sis brought us there at night), but we found it smaller compared to the Ikea here.

After that, we crossed the street for the Katong Laksa, ate using only a spoon. Even though our legs were hurting by the afternoon we still managed to cover Queensway Mall and Chinatown before heading back to pack up our luggages!

Sis and bro-in-law then brought us to Oasis for Taiwanese porridge dinner. The place is situated at a rather nice park, and would make for rather scenic walks if not for the humid weather.

After dinner it was time to rush to the train station! It was a close call as we arrived on time with only a few minutes to spare, and we were held up by our own customs people until another officer hollered to them to let us go and stop holding up the train.

Can't remember. Think we slept throughout Tuesday. Heh. We'll be heading back to Universal Studios probably in a couple of years, when the Battlestar Galactica and Transformers rides are up and running!

wePadding

Right.

So here we are in Suntec City blogging from an iPad. A display set in Epicenter jailbroken and running Cydia with the fonts replaced with horrible Times New Roman, but goodness it's a pleasure to type on this heavy baby when it's resting on a surface in landscape mode.

Also, the screen on the iPhone 4! Gorgeous. We had a side-by-side comparison with our 3GS and it was like comparing a plasma telly to a LED telly.

The things we do to walk off a heavy Japanese buffet lunch at Kuishin-Bo!

Phuket Revisited 2010: MEALWHAT(tm) Phuket Picks

MEALWHAT(tm) interrupts the Bangkok Photolog series to present you this special edition!

We begin with LUNCHWHAT(tm) on the first day at Phuket! After checking in and resting at the hotel, we head to a favourite spot for lunch: Restaurant No 6!

This place serves decent meals that doesn't cost a bomb and most of their drinks are either served in tall glasses with lots of ice, or in bottles with a foam cosy to keep the beer icy-cold.

After some mulling for where to go next, we decided to splurge a bit for DINNERWHAT(tm)!

Two people.

Four dishes.

All of them, mouthwateringly delicious.

Although we must admit, the butter and garlic sauce may be just a little bit too much for two people...

Every morning, for BREAKFASTWHAT(tm) we would indulge in a heavy buffet breakfast consisting of porridge, pastry buns, toast, pancakes, pork sausages, ham, scrambled eggs, juice, and tea or coffee.

On our second day in Phuket, whatwith a heavy dinner the night before and a heavy breakfast in the morning, LUNCHWHAT(tm) saw us taking it easy and sharing just one dish once we arrived at Central Festival!

After some shopping what better way to rest than to indulge in some ice cream?

And after even more shopping later, it was time for DINNERWHAT(tm)!

We decided to walk into Yayoi after seeing a poster of the yakisoba with omelet.

And while we're able, most of our dishes will feature pork!

Day three in Phuket had us going island hopping to Phi Phi Island for most of the day! LUNCHWHAT(tm) was a simple buffet lunch setup that filled the stomach after our snorkeling session.

For DINNERWHAT(tm) we were introduced to MK Gold by the Chief! However, the branch at Jungceylon was a steamboat setup and not the barbeque setup that the Chief intended to introduce to us. Nevertheless the food was still good!

Everything was poured into the bowl and it all came to a boil quickly.

What we're really reminded of with the sauce is the sweet sauce you get when eating dim sum. What else is in that sauce, we've no idea. But it's tasty!

Day four saw us having our meals at Restaurant No 6 again! A very convenient place for food indeed.

Day five was our last day in Phuket! Yes, somehow we either have been having Thai food or Japanese food when dining in Phuket.

Fuji's food was still good, although must make note for Chief to not order the Fuji Green Tea Fit in the future.

The pork rolls were a delight, mixing pork and cheese!

In future trips to Phuket, we will explore Deutsche Kneipe if they still have their All-You-Can-Eat offer, and Hard Rock Cafe (to get the Phuket Hurricane glass!), and perhaps one of the other recommended seafood restaurants!

Video Games Live In KL!

Ok the first time we heard of Video Games Live was after when we missed the opportunity to go hear Distant Worlds perform in Sporeland. VGL was coming up in Sporeland and we could actually get tickets, but we weren't too sure about it. One thing was because VGL featured music from loads of video games, including games we've not played like Metal Gear Solid, Kingdom Hearts and Halo.

Went to iTunes and found that they have an album out there, and checked the songs. Out of the lot, we were only really inclined to listen to the Civilization IV Medley. We're not really sure how the other songs would sound, and we aren't even sure if the Civ IV Medley would have Baba Yetu in it.

Anyways we skipped the VGL concert in Sporeland as we weren't too sure of the venue they were performing in and moped over the loss of Distant Worlds but got over it...

Then about a month back lad informed us that VGL was coming to KL. Since they were coming here, we made a spontaneous decision to go and immediately bought tickets for lad, esteban (the two most likely to enjoy video games music among the lot heh), and for Chief and us. And every now and then we would get paranoid that we would forget to bring the tickets on the day itself.

Come last Saturday, we drove everyone down to KL, making a dinnerstop at Yellow Cab near Asian Heritage Row for dinner.

So...we couldn't decide what size pizzas to order, and had the waitresses bring out all the pans so we could see just how large a 10" and a 14" pizza would be, and ended up ordering two 14" pizzas to share among the four of us - an anchovy pizza and a mushroom pizza.

Verdict? Rather good, but rather pricey at over RM40 per pizza heh. And these aren't the meaty options with chicken, beef pepperoni and salami and the likes. We've yet to try those. But they were filling, and the four of us were definitely full after that.

Headed straight to KLCC with barely fifteen minutes to spare! Arrived at the Plenary Hall just in time to seat and let the show start.

What can we say about the concert?

Ninty to ninty-five percent fanboy attendance. Rest, fangirls/girlfriends/wives.



The opening had everyone excited. This concert was one where no one sat quiet throughout the performance. Everyone was cheering and clapping at every point of the show! Hearts were plucked at nostalgic 8-bit games coming up on screen with the music supplied by the orchestra, everyone laughed to see Tetris played as the screen slowly filled up with Tetraminos (accompanied by music from the NES version of the game, oh and there was a choir too! They had to shout 'HEY!' at the end of the Tetris piece!), everyone shouted to see old games pop up.

In between performances there were videos from the composers, a Skype conversation with the creator of Pong, and games! One dude was invited on stage to play Space Invaders, he had to wear a t-shirt with the picture of the spaceship and ran left and right about the stage to shoot the incoming alien invaders. He didn't manage to win the top prize, but the goody bag he got had pretty good premiums too! Portable Space Invaders, an Earthworm Jim CD, he got to keep the Space Invaders t-shirt... The fun bit was the orchestra playing the background beat to Space Invaders, which got consecutively faster as the invaders approached closer, and the audience clapped along as well...

It was when the host asked for the winner of the Guitar Hero competition held earlier that we only found out that we missed out a fair bit going on before VGL started that night. Anyways, the winner was invited up on stage where he got to play Guitar Hero: Van Halen. The song? "Jump", accompanied by the host, Tommy Tallarico on electric guitar, the orchestra and the choir (who shouted "Jump!" at every point in the song hahaha). Initially the winner was supposed to play the song on Hard, but the entire audience made him play it on Extreme - which he did quite well!

So there were music from Metal Gear Solid, Mega Man, Kingdom Hearts, Halo (this one we found the music very good even though we've never seen or played the game before), World Of Warcraft (there are more choral pieces than just A Call To Arms!), Sonic The Hedgehog (the choir even sang the "Sega!" bit at the start!), Super Mario, Shadow Of The Colossus, God Of War, a special appearance by Norihiko Hibino (composer for the Metal Gear Solid songs) playing 'Snake Eater' on the sax, and Laura Intravia dressed up as 'Flute Link' playing a medley of Zelda songs, and at the end...

Tommy (host): The company is...Square Enix!
(Audience goes wild.)
Tommy: The composer...Nobuo Uematsu!
(Audience goes wilder, shouts, cheers and whoops.)
Tommy: The game...Final Fantasy!
(Audience claps, cheers, shouts out their favourite series.)

Jack Wall, that is, we think it's Jack, the conductor, raises up one finger. No response from Tommy. Two fingers. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven.

Tommy: ...SEVEN!
(Can audience go crazier? Apparently so.)
Tommy: THE SONG!
(Tommy and audience in unison, audience in fevered pitch, we too guiltily shouting along.)
Tommy and audience: ONE! WINGED!! ANGEL!!!

Seriously, has there been such fanaticism ever for an orchestra performance? Even for the Lord Of The Rings Symphony everyone was civil. No screaming fanboy singing along to 'The Bridge Of Khazad-Dum' or 'The Black Rider' for that matter. This was a rock band concert kind of audience reception to an orchestral performance.

There's only eight choir members which meant that they couldn't really be heard that strongly but the sound set up was very good. Lyrics from the original One Winged Angel, with music arrangement from the Advent Children movie with electric guitar bits. Absolutely grand.

For their encore performances, they gave us not only one, but TWO encore songs! First was a forum request for Chrono Trigger, which sent lad straight to heaven as he loves the game and wasn't expecting them to perform it. The second? Castlevania, performed by the orchestra, Tommy and Jack on guitars, Norihiko on sax and Laura on flute.

All in all, an awesome performance. Now...merchandise.

When it comes to musicals we would normally get the programme and probably the CD as souvenirs. But for this event, the programme booklet was RM25 for photos from their past concerts, no text, no credits to the National Symphony Orchestra or the VGL Choir or such. It really didn't feel something worth getting. As for the CD, it was the same one as we would find on iTunes, except almost twice as expensive. Somehow we refrained from getting it too. Could have gotten something else since they had other merchandise, like t-shirts, but we walked away with just our tickets and the event leaflet.

Now it turns out that members of the YKLS Chamber Choir were singing as the choir for VGL! This, we did not know as we decided to take a break this year. Met the bunch of them after the show where they let loose some steam over the short period of time they had to learn the songs, the difficulty of some of the scores...talk shop, basically.

Would we have joined as part of the choir instead of the audience if we knew? In this case, we think we best enjoyed the entire thing as audience. The choir couldn't see the screen to see what was showing when songs were playing, so it was hard to make out why the audience were all so hyped up. The energy may be infectious and you'd feel chuffed up for the performance, but the experience just would not be the same.

Plus, asides from Warcraft's 'A Call To Arms', the chanting from the epic-sounding pieces of Halo, FFVII's 'One Winged Angel', we don't think there was much songs we missed singing. Hmmm if they performed 'Baba Yetu' it might be touch-and-go between audience and choir...

For Distant Worlds, if they need choir members, oooh yes count us in straightaway!

So, will we watch this again? Sometime in the future, yeah!