3,679,200 Minutes

It's 2015! Time really flies near the end of the year, and honestly we really felt the final quarter of 2014 just zip past.

Last year we tried something new, following the footsteps of marsyparsy (who's done this for 2 years now) and alakzen (who only tried it for 2013 and decided it was enough) and post a photo a day on Instagram. Except we weren't satisfied with just posting a photo and using the caption to state the date, we had to find extra work for ourself by:

1. Editing the photo to place text, specifically a hashtag and the day;

2. Publishing first on Tumblr;

3. Getting the Tumblr link, then only publishing on Instagram.

Thank goodness for IFTT and Instagram having the option to post directly to Facebook, otherwise we would have given up sooner or later with all that trouble we found ourself.

So, for 2014, we've captured a moment every day in pictures. Most days were mundane, some days couldn't be captured in just a photo. But the idea there was just to jot down: here, look, today was an experience, don't forget it, don't let the day just go by. Blogging used to be how we kept our memories of what happened (well, this blog has survived up to now) and is probably still one of our best repositories of what we've done. Facebook? Endless scrolling and scrutinising posts if we ever wanted to find something from years past - it's great for the present, not the past (unless you've specifically made a photo album of it). Instagram would be slightly easier provided you've used an unique hashtag to categorise your own photos, and thumbnails are easier to scan compared to blog titles.

Currently we are writing using a Bluetooth keyboard paired to our iPad, which means it isn't easy linking words to events that happened (we guess in this case linking to our Tumblr posts) like we used to do (three years ago). But it would still be good to list down highlights for the year (we'll just update this post later once we refer back to our photos):

To start, we'd stayed on with the Young KL Singers for the third year (since joining back in 2012 for the 10th anniversary production), with the start of the year seeing us perform 2013's production, YKLS.Period, in PenangPac in January, before starting our new production: Incantations. Boardgaming made its way back with a higher frequency when the occasional Fridays saw some members of YKLS coming to YCA for the occasional gaming session. In more choir-related happenings, a bunch of us got together to sing an a capella version of Everything Is Awesome from The Lego Movie. A bunch of us got into the Shake 'n Take craze. Performed and experienced the Yayasan Sime Darby Arts Festival at KLPac, which was a great eye-opener. Followed a bunch of choirmates to the Henessey Artistry event. YKLS then performed in DPAC before heading up to PenangPac a few weeks later to perform, which was an awesome experience with more members driving up this time (and it being a more intensive food trip)! To round up the choir year, we managed to join all the carolling sessions this year at 1 Utama.

We decided to start watching Doctor Who, starting from Series 5, working our way to Series 7 before going back to Series 1-4 to tide us over while we waited for Series 8. Then started Being Human after that, both the BBC and US remake (although only for the first couple of seasons in both cases. Sailor Moon Crystal finally started showing much to our excitment. The Hobbit trilogy finishes and we're left feeling it would have been better off as a two-parter instead.

Chinese New Year this time we experienced our first pun choi. It's been agreed among the TTDIans that birthdays should now be just a makan celebration without the stressful part of pooling and getting presents, and while we managed to avoid celebrating with the January babies (on account on being sick), we celebrated a belated version with the March babies instead. As for the Chief's birthday, we were slightly slow at planning it but managed to pull it off starting with a joint celebration with the TTDIan's, then a quiet date at Way Modern Chinois trying out their truffle roast duck, and pulling off a surprise party with the guys (featuring lots of spinach). There were also a couple of weddings, leaving only a handful of collegemates and schoolmates that haven't tied the knot (and speeches warning said folks that the hengdais are no longer as young and active as they used to be so don't take too long). More friends are also now proud parents although this year we couldn't make it for the full moon celebrations. The Chief also brought us along to attend the gala dinner event of A Journey Through Time.

Played Diablo III (again, only as far as the storyline was concerned). Attended the Professor Layton vs Pheonix Wright launch at Berjaya Times Square. Dropped our portable hard drive containing our iTunes media, and lost most of our recent music and videos (thank goodness our photos were backed up to the laptop instead). Got our first Mac Mini and started moving over to the Mac. Bought not just one, but two Logitech bluetooth keyboards (they are so worth it). Won a Lenovo Yoga tablet running Android OS. Finally found Ultra Street Fighter 4 on sale on Steam.

Made a couple more trips to Penang and a number of trips to Singapore! Finally made full use of our Universal Studios Singapore season pass before it expired. Also, experienced Guangzhou for the first time and once again walked for hours due to excellent weather.

Finally ended the year on a quieter note as we didn't have a Christmas party this year (due to a hectic December), and a simple New Year's Eve with friends for dinner and games.

Gosh. We must say that the photo a day project does help in reminding us of the many things that did happen in 2014! Here's hoping there's plenty more in store for 2015!

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.

Road Rage

Right this has to be jotted down before we procrastinate any further.

So yesterday we decided to break the routine and head to FF 1 Mont Kiara instead for Klevin's Pump instead of the usual cardio classes, and on our way there we had a rather unpleasant encounter with what would be a road bully. Unpleasant in that, after a day of nothing but good things and laughter thanks to Foxtrot and The Japanese Tradition YouTubes, this one bit soured up the rest of the day.

Start with us heading down Jalan Dato Abu Bakar towards the T-junction where one would turn left to Phileo Damansara or right towards Bangsar and Hartamas. Along the way, this white Mitsubishi on the right lane makes a good show of showing that he's the kind of driver that drives aggressively, cuts into other people's lane without signaling and cutting it real fine short of causing scraped bumpers and blares his horn at you for signaling to move into the left lane just because he's currently in said lane and speeding his arse off to beat the traffic lights.

Oh well since this is Malaysia, it's quite likely that many people may have started off as good, safe drivers, but given how aggressive the drivers are over here anyone who didn't learn to drive aggressively as a form of defense against other aggressive drivers would end up spending hours on the road due to giving way to callous drivers cutting into their lanes, forcing them to drive oh so very slowly, and waiting ages in a long queue as others instead choose to drive as close to the bottleneck before cutting back into the already congested lane...

So anyways this road bully started off at us by trying to cut into our lane when he drew level, or was perhaps just a couple of inches ahead of our car. You know, that kind of cutting-into-other-people's-lane-by-edging-in-slowly-and-forcing-the-other-car-to-slow-down-or-move-into-the-next-lane-or-else-get-into-an-accident method. Soon enough he realizes that he wouldn't be able to cut in that way and so he cuts in behind us.

That kind of overtaking could be expected on the road, really.

Then later on as we arrived at the traffic lights at said T-junction, we were on the leftmost lane, just slightly ahead of the left exit to Phileo Damansara. Said road bully so happens to be behind us and wants to take the exit.

Instead of waiting for a green light, so that we could move ahead and he could head his own way, he decided that he couldn't wait and honked for us to move forward and make space for him to squeeze into the exit lane.

(We understand that this description is not easy to picture unless one is rather familiar with said location.)

Anyways. Fellow honks us to move forward. We can't move forward unless we want to knock the bumper of the car in front of us, so we didn't budge. Fellow honks again and for longer.

And the next thing you know said road bully decides to go ahead and squeeze in, and somehow manages to squeeze between the curb and our car...

...And proceeds to wind down his window and hammer on our front passenger window, before driving off down Phileo Damansara.

Whoa. That's a first.

Since he had to squeeze his way through, we had enough time to whip out our iPhone and jot down his car plate number. We then proceeded on to 1 Mont Kiara, and after a quick chat with the Chief (via Whatsapp) and a gym friend, it was agreed upon that this would count as road bully behaviour. However, we weren't sure just what we could achieve by reporting this incident as we weren't hurt and Aidan wasn't damaged (save for the road bully's oily smudge of his knuckles on the window).

So after gym and dinner, we headed off to our nearby police station and made a report. We thought it best to give ourself a measure of protection - if we should cross paths with him again and things took a turn for the worse, we would have a report to back us up. Also it would be good to help others - we're thinking that if someone else falls victim to him then our report might confirm his behaviour.

Armed with his car plate number, we walked into the station to make our report. Sitting at the counter, the officer took our statement, we showed her using our iPhone Maps where the incident took place, and then proceeded to open Notes to show the information we took down.

Before she looked at the note, the officer wanted to see the location again (she probably wasn't too familiar with the area), hence we switched back to Maps. The iPhone was on the table facing her. Once she was done, we switched back to Notes - only we had accidentally touched the screen somehow and was about to send the note as an email - the draft screen appeared.

We wanted to cancel the draft, and at the pop-up asking us if we wanted to delete the draft we tapped the red 'Delete Draft' button...

...only...

...our note seemed to have disappeared as well. Somehow the note got deleted as well. And we couldn't remember the car plate number save for a couple of letters (which was why we wrote the note in the first place).

The disappointment, despair and embarrassment we suffered at such misfortune! To be let down at the last minute!

In the end the officer did continue on to finish the report, and then provided us with the station's telephone number in case of anything. So we guess, this is the best there is for now.

At least we're thankful that it didn't lead to any fights nor damage to our car!

Spa-cation

Now during the last MATTA Fair, the Chief and us spent a bit of time getting some vouchers. This inlcuded vouchers for Lavender Spa in Sri Petaling, which we decided to use on a day where we'd nothing planned.

Now, our expectations of the place were rather, frankly, that it was of the kind that you might see in the Hong Kong TV serials (of the rich family / business tycoon variety) where the actors would at some point be meeting at a spa and the scene would be at the jacuzzi area, only in our case we wouldn't expect the spa to be posh to the extent that there won't be anyone else.

No way would we expect a Balinese haven where the entire day would be spent in some flower scented hot tub or milk bath followed by a 2 hour aromatherapy massage, facials and other such delights.

Hence, we were rather impressed that Lavender Spa's setup was far more, well, modern and well-maintained than we gave it credit for (we're rather cynical of photographs - half the time they never turn out as shown). It did well to allay our concerns of spending the entire day in a run-down dingy spa.

The lockers were secured using not one but two keycards (one assigned to us and another by the locker supervisor), although the downside of it is that it's a bit more of a hassle to access the locker whenever we wanted to. We'd to change into some oversized robe and shorts that could definitely look better, comfortable as it may have been. It certainly put us in mind of hospitals and prisons in a way.

The entire place was clean, there were massage chairs each fitted with a tv screen and headphones, the cafeteria for free food (although they state that they would charge us for any excess food left unfinished), a sort of AV room for movies, a massage area, and even a hair salon. Oh and let's not forget the jacuzzi, steam room, sauna, and some sort of hydrotherapy pool where you can be blasted by jets of water far harder than the regular jacuzzi.

Occassionally the staff would come up and ask everyone if they were interested in getting their hair washed and blown, or for the massage.

Our vouchers included a massage and a hair wash, and well, we won't say our experience of the massage was good. Not because the Chinese lady didn't know how to give a good massage (meh) but because she spent most of the time lamenting the fact that we didn't understand Mandarin. Since we could still doze off and since we didn't need to pay anything extra, we tuned her out and left her to get on with it.

As for the rest of the day...

Eat (and watch Animal Planet).

Play Tiny Towers (the game was just released not long ago then and we'd just downloaded it befoe heading to the spa).

Watch Animal Planet while lounging on the massage chair.

Eat (and watch Animal Planet).

Watch Animal Planet while once more lounging on the massage chair.

Use the jacuzzi and hydrotherapy thingamabob (and watch Animal Planet).

Shower.

Eat and play Tiny Tower (while taking a break from Animal Planet).

Have our hair washed while our phone charges on one of the power points usually meant for the hairdryer (because Tiny Tower is one hell of a battery sink).

Overall, it was an ok experience that didn't have us raving to go back for more, and if we didn't have our iPhone and didn't bring any other form of entertainment we would have been stuck watching Animal Planet the entire day. Waitaminute, we almost did spend the entire day watching Animal Planet (not that that's a bad thing, AP's actually rather interesting).

In some way it was like taking a little break without having to go far or spending a lot, unlike our other trips. And we certainly did manage to just chill for the entire day. Chalk it up to having to spend the entire day cut off from the outside world.

Of course we could also almost experience the same thing (to a lesser degree) by spending the entire day at The Curve - we can chill at Starbucks at Borders in a sofa with any book we want, we could take a shower at the gym, and head to iKea and chill even more in the concept rooms. Only thing missing would be the free flow of food, though...

Auction Awareness

There's just somethng about the PC Expo auction that had us being slightly reckless and needing to consciously keep ourself in check. Thank goodness the Chief was with us, really, to help figure out a limit to how much we were willing to spend on the items we were interested in (it was either the Garmin Nuvi 1350 GPS, the desktop, the Samsung Galaxy Tab or the Panasonic 42" LED telly).

Of course, the emcee would first inform us of the normal retail price and the promotion prices of the item to be auctioned, to make sure we were level-headed enough to not bid over the normal retail price.

Initially we never did plan to buy anything from the PC Expo, and then we saw some things we were interested in. So we planned to just take part in the auction, with half a mind to bid just for fun.

Bearing in mind, of course, that unlike playing some boardgame with elements of bidding (where sometimes the idea is to hike up the price of some item to an unreasonable price just because you know another player desperately wants it), if we bid too high a price in this auction, we were going to have to pay for it if we end up winning the bid.

And then somehow the Chief thought that we should actually try and bid for the GPS - we might be able to get it for, perhaps, around RM350 (normally RM545), or at the most, RM450.

And so the bidding began!

Everyone took part in the fun because the emcee enforced a minimum RM1 and maximum RM50 bid, rather than let some bloke bid a price that would just shut everybody else up, turning it into a game of The Price Is Right instead. And we must say that for items not too expensive, having everyone participate can be rather fun.

Because everyone would bid initially, and the starting bid of RM1 would just go up, and at some point most people would drop out, leaving only those who were actually interested to continue.

This was what happened to us! At some point past RM350, it came down to only us and another bloke bidding for the GPS. It's quite a feeling, when you realize everyone's stopped bidding and are watching you and your opponent duke it out.

And with a competitive streak, it's hard to stop sometimes! There we were nicely suggesting a price we were comfortable with paying, and then this other feller starts bidding at RM10 higher! Indignantly we would then raise the bid by another RM10 (because raising it by RM50 would only bring it much closer to the actual price which isn't our intention), and this will go own until we nearly lose track of how much we were willing to bid the item for.

Imagine:
RM1.
RM50.
RM100.
RM150.
RM200.
RM250.
RM300.
RM310.
RM320.
RM330.
RM340.
RM350.
RM360.
RM370.
RM380.
RM390.
RM400.
RM405.
RM410.
RM420.
RM425.
RM430.
RM435.
RM440.
RM450.
RM455.
RM460.

And we let the other fellow have it at RM460. Or RM470. Towards the end when we were both bidding at RM5 increments there were longer and longer pauses as both of us were considering if we should keep raising the price (competitive as we were we managed to keep ourself in check), and while the both of us were at opposite ends we had a clear view of his anguished face every time we raised the price, forcing him to deliberate if he could afford to pay another RM5 more.

And no, we didn't stoop so low as to bid just RM1 higher. No patience for that!

Anyhow it's interesting because when we first entered the PC Expo, we never had the intention to get a GPS! See just how dangerous auctions can be? One minute we're walking in, figuring out a budget for a new desktop, next thing we know, we could have been happily forking out RM500 for a GPS!

Oh well. As for the rest of the items, we lost interest when the bid went higher than half the original price, and saved ourself from an impulse buy.

CNY Recap, 2011

And...

This year's Chinese New Year was spent being sick the entire time. Started before eve where we picked up the flu bug of the backdrip variety, which meant itchy throat, some difficult sniffling, and lots and lots of chesty chesty coughing.

We thought it was an okay time to fall sick, since all we had to do was rest and there isn't much one can do during the first couple of days of CNY, hence we thought no problem.

Until the reunion dinner.

Now we think best time to fall sick is after the family dinners is best. Especially since our reunion dinner was held in a restaurant this year - while waiting for each course we had to head to the restrooms to hawk up and all that. Very inconvenient.

But being sick on CNY isn't all that bad otherwise. Sleep, wake up, eat, play Starcraft, play Cityville, sleep again. Stay far away from baby. No need to go anywhere, drive anyone, do anything.

It was a good four days of rest, and then we were back to work on Monday, still sick. Which wasn't all bad because we were the only one at work on Monday, hence we needn't worry about spreading it about.

We got better in time for the TTDI visitations last Saturday - the day was spent gambling at lad's (blackjack), Puddy's (In Between) and TTP's (Texas Hold'em Poker) houses. Texas Hold'em Poker was interesting because Long Leaping actually owns a set, complete with chips, cards and even bought a felt poker table mat!

Unlike gambling at Blackjack or In Between, where we only left the dollar gambled out in plain sight while all other cash remained hidden in the wallet, for Texas Hold'em we swapped money for chips, hence there wasn't so much a fear of losing money. Perhaps because we've already considered the RM10 we've swapped for chips as lost already, and it was a fixed sum (unlike the other games where we can continue playing till our wallet was sapped dry).

Anyways.

It's Chap Goh Meh today and we're still sick with a mild dry cough that probably gets aggravated in cold dry air-conditioned rooms in the middle of the night.

And we've not eaten a single mandarin the entire CNY!!!

Thirty Years, Birthday Cheers

...because we're running out things to rhyme with 'years' that we could put in context with our birthday party at 42 East (yes well if we wanted to we could come up with something but it might be too sappy or cheesy for us to bear with sometimes).

For all the Chief keeps telling us how stressful it is to plan a birthday party, the Chief does plan well. We were left in the dark as to where the venue was, and quite surprised when we were told that it was actually nearby in TTDI itself. Better yet was when on the day itself we found out that it the Chief pulled some strings to get the entire place to ourselves (almost to ourselves, walk-in customers to the place were served too).

And just as we thought we knew where it was, we found ourself led to 42 East instead. Hey, goes to show how rarely we go that far up the pub street of Taman Tun.

This time, we had the tables set up with half of the chairs actually being wall sofas, so instead of a rather long table with eight people on one side, the proprieter of the place split it to two tables instead. Still meant we had to play Musical Chairs to get to chitchat with every one.

The food was good, although between the chicken and the pork ribs served for the set meals, we must say the pork ribs tasted better. The Chief thought that since we just had pork the night before, we might want a change of taste. Anyways, since most meals with The Chief are shared half-and-half (unless we've agreed not to swap), we got to enjoy the pork ribs too.

And so, Thaipusam lunch was a blast celebrated with our Chief, Alex, Bunny, carpe diem, Jaded Jeremy, Junior, Legolas, Lifebook, Little Prince, Luscious Leesh, nivlac, Ryan, Sinner, SK, and William! Many thanks for celebrating with us and welcoming us to Club 30!

We don't think anyone would appreciate us putting up their photos through the fish lens we got as a present though - but we're using it for our contacts list. And it's causes us a moment's hesitation every now and then when we get a Whatsapp text or a call and a blown-up face stares at us!

Thanks again to our dear Chief for going through the trouble for organizing this party, and to everyone for the effort in coming!

Now let's see the rest of this year through without feeling any older!

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!

Bon Annee 2011!

And we're well into January of the new year! And what better way to celebrate than to have a party! Lad had put out an email for a Christmas-cum-New Year's party, and although we were a bit beat from having to help out with Christmas parties our family had, we were looking forward to meeting up with friends for a potluck, banter and the likes.

From us, we brought ice cream and mini ice cream cones for the potluck, and our Wii and Jenga for entertainment.

Turnout was good, with everyone bringing food from 6 liters of sangria (and so much chopped fruit in it that it doubled as a fruit salad!), a dessert made from humongous pisang tanduk, chicken and beef satay, nachos with cheese, fruit salad, Jagermeister, and roasted chicken with potatoes!

Once everyone was stuffed, we turned to Jenga as yours truly here forgot (we went home to check, and shall now say, couldn't find) the step-down power converter for our Wii, hence we couldn't set it up to play.

It's interesting how the Jenga games vary from one group to another. With the bloggers we get Freeform Jenga, where instead of placing the pieces neatly on the top it could be placed any way, any how as we liked. And the game could start with someone building the tower any way he liked too rather than the default 3-by-3!

With Nut and gang, it became Orgy Jenga, with everyone taking out and replacing pieces at the same time (we didn't watch this too much as we were too busy enjoying Booker's lovely cocktails).

With the Taman Tun-ites, so far it's normal Jenga. Well we guess it's also because it's a rather big group, hence not everyone was keen to play only to find that when it's finally their turn, they're given this tottering structure destined to crumble upon touching. Maybe Freeform Jenga works better for groups under 10 people?

And we've yet to get people to try Shot Jenga, where when it's your turn, you take a shot, then remove and replace a piece.

Oh well. Twelve days of Christmas and it's time to take down the tree!

2, 102, 400 Minutes

Oh look. We've dropped to less than a hundred posts in total for this year! And we think of it as a good year overall.

To start, we took a break from the choir this year, after two years of joining and missing out on other activities like birthday parties and cybercafe sessions. And speaking of birthday parties, we celebrated ours by having all our friends meet up at Mage Cafe (and also had us hiding under the table out of sheer shyness). Birthday parties with others also saw us all dressing up as if it was Halloween or heading out of town to Fraser's Hill to celebrate, staying in a bungalow as if we were the Bennets in Meryton. And this year we took a break from trying to organize surprise parties for the Chief (otherwise where will the surprise be?), although we managed to surprise the Chief with a belated birthday dinner at what was thought to be Al-Rahji Bank.

As for trips, we've visited Sibu and Bali for the first time, revisited Bangkok (oh the thought of Bangkok makes us melancholy, how we miss the food!), Phuket (oh the thought of Phuket makes us melancholy, how we miss the carefreeness of it all!), and Sporeland, not once, but twice (oh the thought of Sporeland makes us melancholy, how we miss the spending power!).

Only in 2010 did we finally get to actively convert videos for the iPhone! Three years after getting our iPod Touch and five years after getting our iPod Video 30GB! Now we watch don't have to wait for our turn to use the telly, we can watch our movies or telly serials anytime, anywhere! And with the Chief having an iPhone too, we can easily share videos between us (although we must admit, as The Chief's taste runs more towards Chinese serials like Born Rich while ours stay English, although The Chief has started Dexter too!).

Other stuff this year includes only a single treasure hunt trip that took us to Kenyir, our first time waxing, and our return to our dentist (after years of absence) first to fix up our pearlies, then to remove one of them.

And it was this year that we became an Unker (and our sis has already been calling us and all her friends Uncle too)!

We'll say it was a good year. Time sort of flew by without us noticing, like how the TTDIans had a knockout drink session sometime in March, but we thought it to be sometime in the middle of the year!

Anyways, hello 2011!

Chronically Acute

That is how we shall describe our situation since two Sundays ago. For that was when our first ulcer made itself known to us, somewhere far back in the deep recesses on the left side of our mouth. From being something normally bearable, after three to four days instead of improving our condition worsen to the point where we could only eat on the right side of our mouth and there were frequent sharp spikes of pain shooting through the left side of our jaw.

Two Tuesdays back, after a long karaoke session celebrating Sinner's birthday (where we stoned out after a few hours, when a slew of
Chinese songs dominated the playlist), it reached a point where we had to resort to anti-inflammatories to lessen the pain (the past few days before that had us applying Oral Aid every hour, if not more often!), not trusting paracetamol to suffice. At this point the ulcer was so large that a large drop of Oral Aid could fill it without even overflowing!

Still the pain continued that we decided to visit the doctor to have him have a look at our situation. The doc was sympathetic with our plight after one look, and diagnosed secondary infection, sending us off with a quick bout of antibiotics while telling us not continue with our painkillers and Oral Aid. In hindsight we realize we should have taken up his offer for more painkillers, extra spare stock is always handy.

By last weekend, brushing teeth was like brushing with fire, the pain had us exhausted, waking up from sleep wasn't any better as our mouth would be dry and the slight movement with a dry mouth sent fresh spikes of pain from all over, and in the aftermath of a getaway in Fraser's Hill we had the same ulcer-turned-flesh wound, an ulcer or pimple (we couldn't tell, but the pain level is the same regardless) on the bite line on the left side of our tongue, and another ulcer was beginning to form at the front of our lower gums.

Generally we're not one who can't withstand some levels of pain but this was like having a cilice continually gouging a hole in the flesh!

In the end last Wednesday, the day just before we left for Sporeland, we crawled to our dentist for his opinion. We thought perhaps he had something better, like lignocaine mouthwash, or better yet, he could just jab us with local anesthesia and offer us some temporary relief. But the first thing he uttered after taking a look?

"The upper molar is biting into your cheek, causing the ulcer and not letting it heal. You better remove it."

A rational part of us was wondering if it was necessary, were there any other options, hey, surely we didn't need to have a perfectly good tooth extracted? Rational bit momentarily thought to accuse our dentist of just wanting to extract the tooth for profit, but we trusted the dentist to be experienced enough to know what he's about, and not out just for the money.

The other parts of us were in pain, just do it and end our misery. The pain of extraction surely cannot be worse than our current situation, bloody molar no wonder we've been hurting so much and the ulcer has not been healing but getting bigger!

Half hour after he'd jabbed us twice with local anesthesia and an x-ray, the tug of war started.

The steady pressure as he clamped down and pulled. The comment that the roots were long. A switch to a different instrument where he screwed (we didn't see, it could be some sort of modified G-clamp for all we know) into the poor molar. A sort of crunch as said clamp took hold. Onwards with the steady pulling. So much for anesthesia, we could still feel the tingle of the nerves. The nurse arrives to hold our head steady. The tug of war intensifies for both parties.

Our dentist wins! A bloody molar with long roots lay beaten in his tray.

Us, relieved and feeling light-headed from the experience walked out of his room, laughing to the nurse as we paid. Partly because we were still under anesthesia (and therefore happy we couldn't feel any pain), partly from the knowledge that the source of pain was no more, and probably partly from shock (even though we knew what to expect, this wasn't our first extraction).

And it certainly did feel better! The ulcer, while still present, ceased to hurt as the tooth wasn't there to aggravate it further! It seems that we no longer need be miserable, what more just before heading to Sporeland!

So here we are in Sporeland and we're now feeling the dull pain in the gums as it's healing from the extraction (as well as from the mild shifting of the remaining teeth), and the other ulcers occasionally remind us that they are still around, but it's nothing we can't handle with a bit of Oral Aid and Nurofen!

Team Layton And The Dam Trip

You know, it being our first time going to the east coast and our first time to Lake Kenyir Resort And Spa, we admit to being a wee bit excited as to what the place held in store for us. Factor in a treasure hunt that would start around 7am in the morning (which meant everyone had to be up by late 5am to early 6am, meet for breakfast and then head down to the venue in Shah Alam) and take around 7 hours, followed by another 250km before we reached the hotel, well...

We knew that there would be the chance that we wouldn't be able to do much once we arrived at the hotel as it would be quite likely we all would take a nap before dinner. We remembered the Rasa-Rasa treasure hunt, where after the hunt around Klang Valley finished by 3pm, we went back and slept till near 7pm before heading down to 3K Inn at USJ for the dinner.

We never expected that we would only reach the resort at Lake Kenyir only at 8pm.

8pm!

The treasure hunt itself was rather adventurous, taking us all over the place out of Klang Valley, and while solving cryptic crosswords helped speed up our ability to solve certain puzzles, we were still lacking a bit in certain areas. Like in spotting rather small logos/signs that were the answers for some of the questions. Some of the times where we spent too long looking for answers were due to trying to spot that small sign which were still visible from the car. However, there were still some questions that stumped the lot of us, that can't be helped except to keep doing more puzzles we suppose.

Once we were done with the treasure hunt, it was onwards to Lake Kenyir Resort And Spa! As esteban was familiar with Kuantan, we all stopped at Hai Peng for a tea break (time management during the treasure hunt meant we never did had time for a lunch break!). The stopover at Kuantan turned out to be both a good and bad thing, good because it meant we got a quick rest, food and coffee before making our way onwards to the resort, but bad because we only reached the hotel at 8pm, just in time for the start of dinner.

You don't really want to be travelling on the roads to Lake Kenyir when it gets dark. There aren't many street lights and as we were reaching Lake Kenyir, we were greeted by a particularly treacherous road filled with lots of potholes.

If the travel time didn't already discourage us from going to Lake Kenyir again, the roads did. We kept worrying about the car suspension when we accidentally hit the potholes in the dark, and it only got easier when we caught up with a lorry, and used it to navigate the road. Another three cars caught up with us, and didn't try overtaking us too. We learned later that they decided it was much easier to tail us to the resort, thinking we knew our way as we had lad's Nokia N97's Garmin leading the way. They continued tailing us even after we made a wrong turn and led the entire party to a jetty instead of the resort at first.

Honestly, we don't think we'll ever make the trip to Lake Kenyir by car or coach from KL. If it's a flight to Kuala Terengganu first, then a transfer pickup from the resort, then maybe.

Reaching the resort at night meant we couldn't see any scenery, but not that it mattered much anyways because we were rather hungry by that point. Parked at the parking lot, got our room keys, and were ferried by buggy (buggied?) to our respective chalets to drop our stuff before we were taken to the dinner venue.

Had our fill and then it was time for the prize-giving. Prizes were given for the top 31 places (the odd number due to tied scores we surmise), and calculating based the score the 31st team scored, we suspected we were somewhere in the top 35 (so we would like to believe).

Anyways, when people ask if we won anything we would nicely say we won a one night stay at Lake Kenyir, complete with dinner and breakfast, and a nice goodie bag. Which we did, after all.

We didn't plan to do much the next day too, for judging from the time we took to reach the resort, we thought it best to check out early for the 7-hour journey back home. So all we did was have breakfast with a view...

Then headed down to the jetty within the resort grounds to take a closer look at the lake. No, we didn't decide to rent a boat to go rowing. We hate how we tend to compare lakes here with those in Glasgow or the Lake District or in Austria, where their lakes were like mirrors.


After 5 minutes at the jetty, we headed back into our air-conditioned chalets for a quick game of Kill Dr Lucky and some rest before we packed up.

Then it was time to check out and leave!

Stopped by Kuantan again, this time at Kemaman Kopitiam (because all other places were closed when we arrived around 3pm). Three of us had the Nasi Lemak Special while esteban had the Nasi Dagang, we all had coffee and such, and then lad went to pay. When the cashier rang up a total of RM72.80, lad thought the cashier was joking. Turns out the cashier wasn't, and then we discovered that the Nasi Lemak Special we had, with the chicken chop sized lemongrass chicken, was about RM12. Our drinks were RM5.50 each. Only esteban's Nasi Dagang was the cheapest, being RM3.50. Good thing the food was good, otherwise we'd all be griping all the way home.

It was somewhere around 7pm when we arrived home, even though we left at 11am!

It was a shame that we didn't extend our stay at the resort, since the difficulty in getting there itself means we aren't going back there any time soon. So we can't say if Lake Kenyir would be a great place for a vacation. But it certainly is a large place to explore, and if you're the adventurous, nature-loving type then there would probably be enough things to keep you occupied what with the many waterfalls to visit. Otherwise, lazing a couple of days in the resort chalet would be a great way to destress (provided you don't mind your chalet running the risk of being invaded by insects that may find their way in).

Another unfair comparison we have to make here. After Nusa Dua, Lake Kenyir can't really compare. And dammit we never did get to explore the spa facilities!

Team Layton And The Top Gear Treasure

And the weekend is finally here! Team Layton, once again, into the foray of treasure hunting! This time Team Layton will be taking on Top Gear's treasure hunt, which starts from Shah Alam and goes all the way to Lake Kenyir!

Well there was a treasure hunt organized by GSC, but the entry fee was a bomb while this one costed only RM600 and included a one night stay at the Lake Kenyir Resort & Spa with meals included, and each member got a generous goodie bag! Definitely quite worth it, even if we don't do as well as we could. In fact, lad has already mentioned that if we cannot answer half the questions that will come out we'll just head straight to the hotel instead.

Now if only we knew just what to expect of Lake Kenyir! Will we swim? Visit the waterfalls? Laze at the resort playing Jenga and other boardgames? Will the shutterbugs with their fancy DSLRs (and us with our iXus and iPhone) go trigger happy?

Or will we all be knocked out in bed from an exhausting morning (because treasure hunts do start at unimaginable hours of 6am!) and miss out on all Lake Kenyir has to offer? What more we should only be reaching the resort after the treasure hunt late afternoon to early evening, and on Sunday we'll be heading back home!

Here's to us snagging top prizes!

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!

Chief Celebrations 2010: Party With The Gangs

Last year, we told ourself that we would plan this a month in advance, meaning by August we would be planning what we wanted to do for the Chief's birthday celebrations for this year much earlier compared to last year where we got slightly worried that we were late in preparations.

However, come August we were caught up in relocation works and the lack of connectivity, we sort of didn't realize how late we were in planning until SK sent out emails in preparation for William's birthday. By then we got internet up and running, and the Chief had already clued us in regarding the selection of food when it came to venue selection (we thought to take a rest from surprise parties, doing it every year would mean it wouldn't be much of a surprise already, no?).

So much more rushed this year compared to last year, that, on the Chief's actual birthday, we were running around looking for stuff to get in preparation for the parties rather than spending it together (and worse yet, we'd made it sound as if we were only going about our usual routine of going to the gym, getting a haircut, which we did in addition so that we didn't lie)!

We admit, the reason why we harried ourself over preparations were due to last year's Project Blue party where we had helium balloons and all that. It's quite possible that if we never planned for decorations last year we would have just booked a venue, gotten a cake, end of story. Or perhaps not. There's something about planning a party with all the little extras (to the point where it may almost resemble a kid's lawn party) that we like.

Due to a flare-up of allergy attacks, the Chief thought it prudent to avoid certain foods so that it didn't worsen the condition. This meant our choices leaned heavily towards porky places, hence celebration with the bloggers was at Checkers!

Bookings were made in a single phone call for a Saturday, attendance was confirmed, and on Friday we called up to ask if we could bring over the cake a day earlier. A waiter (whose first language wasn't English) answered our call and we sort of gathered that he misunderstood our request, we repeated our request and got a, "Yes, yes, no problem, ok," kind of response, so...ok. That evening we brought over the Secret Recipe White Chocolate Macadamia cake over to Checkers, and...yes, the waiter did misunderstood, thinking we wanted to have the party on Friday instead 'cos we saw the tables set out for 10 upon our arrival.

Thankfully that problem was settled without a fuss, and come Saturday went well!

Then came the following weekend (this is the first year where the Chief's birthday parties were celebrated on different weeks rather than the previous years where it was done on different days on the same weekend), where we hoped the Chief's allergies were subsiding, as the venue was at Oriental Banquet, Section 17 with the TTDI gang. The possibility of shellfish was worrying. The venue was kept a surprise from the Chief, who kept asking if we could change the venue to somewhere like Chan Char Teng at SS2 (where we could also order the giant milk tea meant for birthdays!). We kept mum and just drove.

The only concern we had with Oriental Banquet was that when we went over to make our reservations, we were informed that there would be a wedding celebration going on at the same time. We also had a couple of phone calls from them and a fax of their menu specials, advising that if we could, we should preorder our meals first. Since it involved a number of people, we didn't preorder and hoped for the best.

Turns out that Oriental Banquet had plenty of pleasant surprises for us! We got ourselves a room with a waitress to tend to our every need; instead of going for their set menus, we ordered ala carte dishes, and those were served at impressive speeds (we think we didn't wait more than 15 minutes before the food started coming in!) especially since a wedding dinner was going on outside; and the room was equipped with a karaoke machine and mikes!

Cor. Admittedly we didn't expect more than a round table on the first floor, and we were impressed with what we got! Oriental Banquet would be a nice place to go to again for celebrations.

After dinner at the Oriental Banquet, it was off to...Chan Char Teng at SS2 after all. Heh. Because not a single one of us had ever tried the giant birthday Milk Tea before! To qualify we needed to order it three days before or after the birth date (or on the actual day itself) and we needed to order at least RM30 of food and/or drinks. There was over 10 of us, but there was more than enough milk tea to go around as some were lactose intolerant (like yours truly) or had too many drinks already.

Big thank you to everyone who could make it for the parties! Here's to more to come, and that we plan them much earlier! With balloons! And confetti! Probably a pinata!

Dhoby Ghaut

Now this happened when we were in Sporeland. We've noticed at some point that at certain MRT stations, the name of the station would be written in either just English, English and Chinese, or even in Tamil (or Hindi, we're not too sure).

Given the multilingual aspect of Sporeland and Bolehland (although we hear mainly English and Mandarin in Sporeland), this bit of what would otherwise be background noise during our commute caught our interest:

"Dhoby Ghaut."
Fine.
"多美歌."
Oh, so they announce it in Chinese too.
"Please mind the platform gap."
Reminds us of the Tube's deep voice, "Miiind, the gap!"
"下车时请注意缝隙."
Right. So they alternate between Chinese and English!
"The happy-happy warm platform."
What the hey?
"(Some mutterings we could not make out.)"
Was that the Chinese equivalent?

Now initially when we started paying attention to the announcement we somehow fancied that instead of just the one lady saying it in different languages, there were two announcers, one English and one Chinese. And with that in mind, we had this image that the English announcer would speak first, then the Chinese one would translate, then back to the English announcer, etc. And then the English one would suddenly throw a curveball by uttering a totally random sentence to be translated, and the results couldn't be made out.

We mentioned it to the Chief, and while initially critical about our assessment (of course), the Chief couldn't make out what was exactly being said too what with being slightly affected by our 'happy-happy' idea. This bugged the both of us a while until one point, the Chief got it:

"Berhati-hati di ruang platform."

And the last one was in Tamil (or Hindi).

Wax On... Wax Off

...don't forget to breath. Very important.

So. Stewerdess Sal opens her own aesthetics shop, and she needed help from her friends. Specifically, she needed volunteer models so that her staff could practise their techniques when it came to brow treading, manicures, pedicures and waxing. Volunteer male and female models.

Everyone was apprehensive about the waxing thing, whether it was the axillae, the legs, nose hair, and most balked at the idea of going brazilian. The private bits, open for viewing, subjected to scrutiny, and soon shorned of shrubbery.

The thing is, everyone has this idea that waxing brings about an entire world of pain never felt before. The closest we think waxing may feel like, is like having a Handyplast plastered to the leg where there is hair, and yanking it off. Already as it is, peeling the bloody plaster off slowly may sting, what more will waxing feel like!

Since it's for a friend, most of us agreed to lend a helping hand, or in this case, helping arms and legs. We had the impression that it would be just us and the trainee after all. A trainee that we didn't know.

We were ok with volunteering, so our only question we needed to ask Stewardess Sal was, "What's the minimal hair length required for waxing?"

'Cos it's no point us volunteering when the hair length isn't long enough to wax off, isn't it? We've been shaving for close to a year now and it's been taking a toll in razor blades, as we have to shave every other day. If we leave it, at the most after a week it'll start getting prickly and we'll have to do something about it. And we were curious about two things about waxing: just how painful waxing really is, and how long does it take before hair grows again.

And so we made an appointment, and as the day drew closer we received and email from Sal saying that we're the first male model for waxing and that she would be the one to attend to us as the other trainees are working on other volunteers. If we weren't comfortable with that, we can come in later that day after she's done with another volunteer.

Naturally we hesitated. It's one thing having a complete stranger wax you, it's another when it's a friend that you aren't that, er, close with.

It's also a good thing Sal told us this earlier and not on the day we arrived, 'cos we had time to think it over and in the end we thought, what the heck, let's get this over with. If she told us upon arrival we might just have chickened out for good, or else gone through with the thing but felt as if we were doing it against our will.

So when we arrived we got a quick tour of the place, and when it was time we were shown into a room where we changed and waited for Sal. Sal then tried a brand of hot wax on our right axilla. Smelled of rose, and while we couldn't see her applying it we could definitely feel something warm there. Not searing hot, but comfortably warm.

Then we felt a slight pinching feeling.

Then she yanked. And immediately after that, using a gloved hand, pressed on the area waxed.

And in our opinion, it's not that bad. Certainly nothing to scream about!

Then she informed us she was trying a different brand of hot wax on our left axilla (the, well, advantage of being the first volunteer, you get to try a few different stuff!). This time we felt it sting a bit more, so for the rest of the session Sal used the rose-smelling wax.

It was all professionally done. And the pain nothing that would cause us to take pause and breathe or whimper. All the while the two of us chitchatted about this and that. And in under an hour we were finished! With, admittedly, bits of beeswax stuck here and there on our skin, as there was no shower room to clean up after a session.

So our take on waxing? Not the horrifying scream-inducing painful experience that you hear about, probably because hot wax was used and not wax strips. And we're now three weeks past without feeling prickly!

And we gather we had an easier time after all - Rambunctious Ron was the next to be waxed, and in his session he had Stewardess Sal overseeing two trainees waxing him! Turns out he was ticklish during his session, and his laughter could be heard outside the room! Would have made anyone wonder just what was going on in there. Well at least it wasn't the three girls who were laughing!

Unker 'Vier

And it's official.

We have a niece!

You can start calling us Unker Janvier now, while we start thinking of stuff to do and get, like a craft album for our sis for photos of Little Kay. Or baby stuff. Or toys. Or clothes.

The Curve, Disconnected

Sunday came along and we found ourself at the Curve for lunch without our acPhone nor a book to keep us company. Double ouch especially since there's free wifi at Winter Warmers. Thankfully there were magazine to help occupy us even though they seem to be dated 2008, and after lunch while waiting for mum we decided to walk about the outdoor bazaar rather than wait in Winter Warmers.

Walking about with nothing much to see and buy, we paid attention to the singers (we can't really think of them as buskers now, can we?) entertaining the shoppers with golden oldies. The selection of songs actually reminds us of the singers that sing in the Klang Club restaurant, songs you'd hear on Light And Easy.

We spotted an old man happily singing along to 'Stand By Your Man', a smile on his face without a whit to what others may think of him. Seeing him enjoying himself put a smile on our face as well, as we caught ourself also singing along to the chorus (or, at least, to the line 'Stand By Your Man' since that's the only lyrics we know to that song).

We wonder: in the future will we end up like that old man, sitting about singing old songs to singers at a mall, and better still, if they would be performing Lady Gaga's Bad Romance for us to sing to?

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!