Affording A New Automobile

Aidan's been in the family for eight years now. Unfortunately with autos, one can't (or rather, shouldn't) really hold on to them for too long whatwith depreciation, servicing and possible replacement of parts that break down...

Then the Chief got a new car last year. And so, we thought we might as well start 'scouting' around to see what we may want to consider when we ourself would change cars.To be honest we weren't really interested in cars. The only cars that caught our attention were those that had flashy techy stuff inside - like the first time we sat in a Citroen and there was a digital tachometer on the dashboard, or the Prius with all it's buttons.

Not being savvy about cars, the things we're looking for in a new car?
- the infotainment system, which definitely has to have Bluetooth connectivity with our iPhone, and better yet if it comes with CarPlay so we can futureproof against having to upgrade the infotainment system anytime soon. Bonus if it comes with GPS!
- something that can go faster with less engine, road and wind noise!
- the techy bells and whistles such as keyless entry and push-to-start, auto lights and rain sensors etc

Our biggest mistake? Test driving the Ford Focus first.

The moment we got onto an empty stretch of road and the sales agent got us to floor the accelerator...we were brought back to them Daytona days where you just wanted to rev up and go fast. That pretty much ruined the driving experience for all our other test drives where a slower smooth drive was the main idea. Got in the car, stepped on the accelerator, and...meh. We know, we know, it ain't as if we're driving a racing car or summat but still...

Tried the much-advertised self-parking feature too. In an empty basement car park, the Focus ignored most empty bays until it detected a pillar, and then began parking there...and ended up taking up two bays. Well perhaps it would perform better with other cars around. Just as well we're quite capable with parallel and reverse parking. heh.

Of course, what we were looking for in a car wasn't really based on practical reasons...whenever we went, "Ooh this is nice," we had the Chief telling us, "How much is the car?" In getting a new ride the Chief had set the budget first and then picked the car. In our case, it's more of having certain specifications and then picking a car that fits that within acceptable budget. So keeping 'acceptable budget' in mind, we test drove the Ford Fiesta as well. And it was also fun!

To be honest if we didn't test drive the Ford at all, we might have just gone with a Honda Jazz. Or City. Or the new Mazda2 (except that we didn't test out the Mazda2 until quite late, as the rest of the family's driving Mazdas and we wanted something different). Decently priced with satisfactory infotainment system. Somehow not the Toyotas, they've not appealed to us somehow.

But we did, and that pretty much coloured our experience for all the other test drives: "It wasn't as fun." To be honest we didn't try out much...the Honda Jazz, the Renault Captur...the Mazda2 did give a good impression too, it had a more premium and modern feel compared to the Fiesta. Didn't try out the VWs too. Even when comparing specifications as listed on the car companies' webpages, it boiled down to "comparing it against the Fiesta".

With that kind of mindset, yep, we got ourself the Fiesta.

4,204,800 Minutes

All right. 2016 and it's time to recap the last year, however this time we don't have the convenience of checking back our Instagram what we've done every day as we kinda stopped the 'photo a day' thing (maybe we ought to start that back again this year, and do away with the editing the photo to place text in...).

But then again we've upgraded our iCloud account for the 200GB storage plan (one of the best things we've done, no more worries about our photos and videos hogging all the space on our iPhone), so that means we have all our photos on our iDevices for easy referencing!

2015 was a pretty great year - we felt as if there were more things happening. We made new friends and caught up with some very old friends, had lots of fun and games, got careless, got sloshed, got super busy (there were quite a number of near-overnights in the office)...

• Upgraded to the iPhone 6 Plus. Stocks went out crazy fast then compared to the iPhone 6S Plus!
• The Chief brought us to Genting to celebrate our birthday, complete with the Genting Behind The Scenes Tour. Quick fun getaway!
• Boardgames galore, in terms of playing and purchasing! We bought Power Grid Deluxe, the Street Fighter Deck-Building Game, Dead of Winter, and 504 (which until now we've yet to bring out to see play!). Printed our own copy of the very beautiful PnP Dune: The Dice Game by Heiko Günther. Got to try a good number of games thanks to wingedman and meetups with our regular group at All Aboard, YCA and even McDonald's BU!
• And on the digital side of boardgaming, we've started playing multiplayer Ascension with nejustmo and hckerl. Honestly we find deckbuilding games to be better as a digital game - no need for shuffling and tabulating scores.
• Experimented taking protein powder. Limited by lactose intolerance. Too bad it gets kinda jelak drinking it, making it hard to take every day.
• After a couple of years with no broadband and cable tv (read: Astro) at Chateau le Chief, we finally signed up for Maxis Fibre Internet with Astro B.yond IPTV! Now instead of watching Chinese serial DVDs the Chief records Astro tv shows and movies for later viewing (we have almost used up the hard drive at one point).
• Bought Monster Hunter 4 from Kyo, who had a launch event at Tropicana City Mall. Went with the Chief and lad (although only lad and us plays), got our copies, bunked a while at Starbucks for a quick session. Biggest 3DS timesink of the year.
• Bought a new Mac Mini and iPad Mini 3 just before GST was implemented. The iPad Mini 3 replaced our iPad 2 and was definitely lighter to carry around, but at times we sorta wondered if we ought to have gotten a MacBook instead...there are times when we still lug our first Mac Mini around from one place to another (and quite glad that it's actually easy to lug a Mac Mini around to use in other places provided there's a monitor there to plug it into!).
• Bought the new Apple TV. Not really necessary, and heh we've not yet started gaming properly on it.
• Another trip to Bangkok! It has been three years since our last trip, and this trip we decided to end with a nice dinner at Sirocco @ Lebua. Awesome experience.
• And there was the day trip to Malacca as well! The last time we were there was possibly for savante's Christmas party eight years ago!
• Got our Pebble Time! No regrets here as we had no problem adjusting to wearing back a watch (especially one we have no problem sweating with and wearing into the shower), plus honestly the long battery life is a winner. We're also happy to have backed it on Kickstarter as it was cheaper (also before the exchange rate made things less enticing), hence we got one for the Chief too!
• Got a wax gun (pretty much like a glue gun) that definitely sped up the process of our card-sending! No more breathing in smoky fumes from a wax stick!
• Worked more on our calligraphy (not much improvement though), and finally found flexible nibs for copperplate handwriting!
• After half a year of not seriously joining the choir (our reason then was less of wanting to take a break and more of worrying that the performance date would clash with work), we joined for the Illuminations concert and the Illusion opening! It helped that this year's production had no choreography making it easier to join at a late time. We weren't interested in joining earlier for Danny Elfman's Music from the Films of Tim Burton and started our break by joining the Christmas concert only as part of the audience. This year? Still on the ropes.
• Sailor Moon Crystal ended. This reboot makes us cry sometimes due to the quality. Sigh.
• Terry Pratchett's 'The Shepherd's Crown' was released and devastated us.
• Went for Bon Jovi's concert! Exhilarating!
• Couple of weddings. Lad tied the knot, and we got to take another 'Il Divo' photo (although everyone's older and, if not wiser, then wider). Memorable in that us guys were not involved in the gatecrashing, and that during the wedding dinner there were lucky draws to keep the guests entertained. Fun! Then there was Zherrie's wedding, which was definitely a YKLS wedding with lots of singing and performing. Initially we meant to only sing Seasons of Love with the ensemble, then mubbles asked us to duet A Whole New World with her and that started the whole shiok sendiri fest (especially during Yaya's It's All Coming Back To Me Now).
• Managed to surprise the Chief with a slightly stressful birthday celebration as well as with a magic show dinner!
• Experienced our first fun run. Good to know we managed to finish it within a decent time.
• Got ourself a pair of Sketchers Go Walk 3 to replace our 9-year-old Off-Road Crocs. Truth be told our Crocs have been in need of replacing for years, considering how the treads have all worn bald making it a hazard on wet surfaces, but we've not found a suitable replacement till recently.
• Had a Christmas party at Chateau le Chief again after taking a break last year!

And that's just recapping from photos we have on our iPhone.

Run For Fun

So the Chief noticed a particular charity run and was interested in joining. As it was a 5km fun run, we thought, okay, why not, let's support the Chief and run together even though we never found could see what was so fun about a run.

Less than two months before the run, we'd some preparations to make: mental preparation was one thing, we had to start training a bit to make sure we could survive a 5km run!

Our first time on the treadmill to see how well we fared walking/jogging a single kilometre showed just how bad our stamina was. So we figured, all right, it's time for the treadmill every day where possible till we can ensure we finish 5km under an hour.

Well motivation wasn't easy and we soon started feeling our age, or more like feeling our knees.

We never did get to finish 5km on the treadmill but did find we could average a kilometre in around 10 minutes, so we thought we should be fine (for our expectations).

Come run day itself, thank goodness the Chief is the early bird as we had to get up around just before 6am to make sure we could reach the venue before the run started at 7am. It's tough when you're not a morning person and not even a running person, but there's always a first time for everything (it's the following times that will see more resistance).

And so the run started, and we walked/jogged/ran and yes, managed 5km in...checks website...45 minutes 40 seconds! It was easier to run on the road (plus we set our own pace rather than trying to keep up with the treadmill's speed of 10km/h) and having some goal to set made it easier (let's jog until we reach that 3km u-turn checkpoint, ok walk uphill then jog to the next junction etc).

The Chief finished in 40 minutes 5 seconds and looked no worse to wear, unlike us.

Some observations:

- the water station painted a bad picture of runners: cups were everywhere littered after the station. On the main road within a housing area. Given this is a charity run, we're not sure if the people manning the water station were volunteers or not, and even so we don't think it's expected of them to be cleaners as well. True, there weren't many litter bins set up but honestly it just painted a bad picture of runners that day.

- there were kids who finished faster than us. Hey, start exercise early in life, you won't regret it...

- there was a mother who had to carry her child while wearing a knapsack because the kid was too tired already. Salute.

- the field where the event was held was muddy. And with everyone walking on it to reach the registration booth or luggage drop/pick-up, we ended up with mud seeping through our shoes and was walking around with mud soaking our socks!

- if it wasn't for the fact that the gym was nearby and we could shower after the run, we may not have opted to join.

- yes, there is that sense of accomplishment from having completed the run within our expected time frame. No...it probably isn't enough for us to consider joining more runs.

- our legs didn't hurt badly during the following days (but then again we were too busy to notice).

So. We now have our first finisher's medal for a 5km run. Would we do something more serious like a 10km run? Possibly not. Because...why???

The Chief has already signed up for another run (reason for joining partly because there's a very nice medal design), and it being a night run we may possibly drive beside the lot and cheer.

Chief Celebrations 2015: Big Birthday Bash

Early on this year we'd already decided that we wanted to have a big celebration for the Chief instead of the usual separate group parties we hold every year. And so as usual we told ourself we would start planning a month in advance (meaning about August).

And as usual that meant we only started planning in September.

The Chief by now pretty much knows that we never let on what we plan for the birthday parties, except for the dates (it takes a lot more coordination to pull off an actual surprise birthday party so we will keep that as a rare surprise if we can), and so the Chief also made sure to let us know which dates were no good.

This turned out to be almost every single weekend in September. The good news is now we do have a whole month to prepare (phew)!

Right.

So...venue, guests, food, cake, and activities.

We decided that this year we wanted to book an entire venue and have everyone attend in a single party. So we needed to get a venue that could fit...around 40 adult and some kids. Which also means we need somewhere kid-friendly. We started by asking the previous YKLS Cast Party organisers about costs and all so we had a rough budget to work on, and then it was time to start hunting.

First choice we found online was the Greyhouse Bangsar. The corner bungalow in Bangsar looked to be suitably located, big enough for our needs we could have food catered outside and the rooms inside to chill.

The problem was that we were told that it wasn't available as it was undergoing renovation. And there was that added factor that there wouldn't be sufficient parking space... So we opted to take a look at their other choices: the Canvas (a smaller space) and the Penthouse (a much larger space).

We were quite keen on the Penthouse after taking a view. Large space, wifi, sound system, a pool table, foosball table and even a ping pong table...we could have quite a party! Given the space of the Penthouse, we could invite more than just the usual birthday groups - we were already planning to extend the invitation to choir members who knew the Chief. Given how the Penthouse could accommodate a hundred people or so, we could even invite the recent choir members as our guests to the party!

However, someone did suggest Marmalade to us so we decided to take a look there as well and got them to give us a menu choice and quotation.

And in the end, we decided on Marmalade. We liked the fact that not only they gave us a choice of 4 menu selections, but we could pick and mix from the different menus as well. We guess we didn't want to spend too much time picking a caterer if we did go with the Penthouse. Also, Marmalade seemed large enough to fit the number of guests we were aiming for.

With the venue settled and the date confirmed, the last thing to do was to send out the invitations via email and create a Facebook event so we could keep tabs on the headcount of those attending.

Note to self: do not take for granted that sending an invitation via Facebook event would mean the invitee actually is aware of it. We had quite a number of people unaware of it until a few days before the party because we texted them to check. Must say we ourself were to blame for not checking sooner too.

We had MJ make cupcakes for the party, given his talented skills at making pretty confectionery.

Deciding that planning activities weren't necessary, we decided to provide wine instead after checking with Marmalade on corkage. Finally, more balloons (we just can't resist getting helium balloons).

Fast forward to the day itself, and the Chief's face upon realising we'd booked the entire restaurant for the night (and the implication of why the entire restaurant was booked), the initial stress the Chief had upon realising how many people would be coming, the extra stress and awkwardness when there were guests coming in that the Chief didn't know at all (our choir guests)...well, that made us feel that yeah, we could still surprise the Chief even after 7 years of celebrations. Of course, once most of the guests arrived and the Chief had eaten, stress gave way to entertaining friends at different tables and it was all good.

But we were pretty much happy that most could make it to celebrate the Chief's birthday (so much so that we couldn't get from one end of the restaurant to the other during the cake ceremony). We were too busy running around (because we were itchy enough to want to print photos for guests to sign) that we didn't have much of an appetite to eat (even though we were starving as we were driving to the venue!), and regretfully we didn't take as many photos with everyone as we would have liked to.

Playing host at the birthday party did remind us how our past Christmas parties went...and the Christmas party to come. Gosh.

Once more, a big thank you to all who came and made it the big happy party that it was. A big thank you for your thoughtful presents (even to those who don't know the Chief!). We're sorry we didn't get to spend more time catching up with everyone who came. We hope you had great fun and had good food!

Clan Chief Capers

So the other night was dinner with the Clan Chief again, and the Chief's youngest nephew is now old enough to speak and is less shy in public.

Once we were seated, said nephew (who arrived earlier) started greeting the family members that just arrived...

Nephew starts with the Chief's aunty and works his way down the line...

...greeting Chief's mum...

...greeting Chief's dad...

...greeting the Chief...

...and then draws a blank when he comes to us.

Yes well it was too be expected.

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.

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...

Breakfast At Janvier's

Last weekend. Woke up to the sound of someone playing Cooking Dash in our room. The sound alternates louder and softer, as the Chief brings the iPhone nearer to and further away from our ear.

Freshen up, head downstairs, halve scones, plop scone halves into the oven, take butter out from the fridge to warm, decided on Lipton tea instead of the lemon scented Twinings tea, drop in sugar cubes into two cups and pour in hot water, get the honey out as well as the honey server, get out the breakfast plates, remove buns from Bread Talk from their wrapping.

Wait for the oven to go ding! signalling that scones are now warm. Apply butter to warm scones, use honey server to apply a bit of honey at the center of each scone halves, press halves back together, place scones along with buns on breakfast plates, set on table mat on the kitchen dining table, remove tea bags from cups, clear clutter.

Simple breakfast is served.

Chief: So we will have breakfast like this when we stay together?
Janvier: Ya.
Chief: Yay!
Janvier: But only if you wake us up.
Chief: ...
Janvier: And only on weekends.
Chief: ...
Janvier: Well you'll definitely wake up before us what!

Dispensing With Automatic Impulse Buy

Just during the weekend we'd to rush into Tesco to grab some vanilla ice cream, ice cream cones, and a bag of ice for a potluck event, and we chanced upon this as we headed to the ice cream aisle.

Dettol now has an automatic handwash dispenser, that runs on batteries. We'd only time to snap a photo, check a bit of the details, then head on to get what we came for.

So during the potluck, we had the chance to tell the Chief about the handwash dispenser, and our interest in getting one.

The Chief was agreeable when we said that we were interested in getting one until we clarified that we wanted to get it for ourself, to be placed in our bathroom, rather than for use in the office.

The Chief then gave us this look that covered the entire range from Got So Much Money To Burn Ah?, You Very Itchy Fingers Ya, Whatever For?, Waste Of Money, and probably Like That Also Fun all in one, and had us bursting out laughing. We aggravated it some more by miming washing our hands.

But seriously we might just get one, depending on just how efficient it works!

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!

Countering Commercialism

This is the season for florists, and we do remember asking before the prices and one particular florist did actually quote us different prices based on when we wanted to buy the flowers (naturally, with prices on V-day being anywhere up to twice the usual price!). Hence we'd only bought just one rose previously, balking at spending for an entire bouquet (and we think The Chief would have disapproved at the expenditure). No, it's not that we were being cheap, it's just that we thought it's possible to get a nice bunch of flowers at a decent price if we looked.

And then last year as we visited Petaling Street we came across stores and stores of florists! Selling bouquets in all sizes! Hence we made a mental note to come by this Valentine's Day to see if we could get a decent dozen or something.

Last we asked at a florist near home, we were told a dozen costs RM200 (on the day itself). As for our expectations for the prices at Petaling Street, we expected probably somewhere RM120.

Parked at Pasar Seni, crossed the road, arrived at the largest florist with the entrance filled with bouquets and such, and was pleasantly surprised to see that our estimation was actually higher.

We would have gone for the bouquet straightaway but decided to take a walk and see what the other stores had to offer. And asides from the ready-made bouquets, there were also roses, wrapped up in dozens, still with their leaves and thorns, for sale. Also in assorted colours! And as we were walking off, we heard someone ask the price of those roses. Turns out to be only a fraction of the bouquets!

And so in the end we bought a dozen pink roses, a few stalks of white daisies and a vase for only a fraction of a bouquet (although admittedly the bouquet looks nicer compared to our offering)! And the florist even helped us remove the thorns and excess leaves, trim it to a suitable height for the vase, and arrange it before tying it up and wrapping the flowers to prevent damage!

A covert method of delivery was required when it came to personally delivering the flowers, so our next stop was to iKea to grab a box. No need to buy one when there's plenty of used, empty boxes for free near their Customer Service counter.

And here romanticism went downhill as we didn't realise that while we chose a box larger tall enough to fit the vase, it wouldn't fit the vase with the flowers (we estimated too little on this). Hence we'd to carry a box and a plastic bag (opaque enough to hide the fact that there were flowers inside), call the Chief to come out and take the box and plastic bag, and told The Chief that water was needed urgently for the contents.

Hence The Chief had to arrange the flowers into the vase (well, basically undo the wrapping and place the entire thing as-is directly into vase) and water it instead of receiving an already prepared gift.

Sigh. Next year we'll do better.

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!

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!

Bite The Apple

We must say, we kind of suspect that our iPod Touch (first generation) is sort of a brainwasher. A brainwasher to make one get the iPhone. Not like it was a hard job getting us to want an iPhone, but we'll admit if we never did get the iPod Touch we wouldn't really know what was with the hoo-haa about the iPhone, especially since phone-functions-wise it wasn't really up to par with the hardware of other phones and apps only started appearing on the iPhone much much later.

However, after using the iPod Touch for a while, and once Apple moved on from the core apps to mobile web apps (we gave up using this when we found out you need an internet connection to keep using them) to the App Store and not to mention the software updates that makes the iPod Touch much more useful, it wasn't long before we wanted to get an iPhone instead.

We tried telling ourself that it was because we wanted the camera function. That we could still make do with using wifi spots for surfing and all that.

It was a good thing that the third generation iPod Touch didn't get cameras in time, hence we finally caved in and gotten the 3GS. Such a difference! True, it was only a 3mpx camera when everyone else was on 5mpx, no flash, no front facing camera (hence no video calls, Facetime? What?). But it had speakers! We had a data plan and could surf anywhere! We could record better videos as we

Here was the birth of MEALWHAT(tm).

Of course, as a result of our new purchase, the steadfastedly disciplined Chief, who made good effort to discourage us from buying an iPhone until they came out with 64GB models with hardware comparable to other models and a pricetag of less than RM2000 (without getting an exorbitant phone plan), inherited our iPod Touch.

Then, out of the blue, late last month to early this month, the Chief started hinting about getting the iPhone 4. We thought the Chief was joshing, based on the specifications mentioned above but it turns out that our iPod Touch has convinced the Chief to get an iPhone as well!

If we were sure about it earlier, we might have ended up heading to the roadshow at Midvalley at 5am on Saturday a fortnight back to queue up. But we weren't sure then, and did not want to be berated by a delighted Chief at our wanton spending.

We were sure about it when the Chief started going to the Maxis centres to ask about iPhone 4 availability. The Chief, of course, blamed our iPod Touch for the sudden urge to finally get the urge for an iPhone 4.

Come last Thursday we received a text from the Chief saying that the Sunway Maxis centre has stock, but they only sell 20 units a day and that people start queuing early for it.

Coincidentally we were on leave on Friday (clearing leave), which meant we could actually queue up for it!

Too bad by the time the Chief texted us, we couldn't get a reply as to what time the queue starts in case we needed to head to Sunway Pyramid at 5am with a foldable deckchair, a fully charged Nintendo DS and iPhone, and books.

In the end we slept and woke up at 9.15am on Friday, and saw the Chief's reply saying that the queue starts around 9am. Great! We had time! Sped off to Sunway Pyramid and arrived to see a few people milling about the entrance. Phew, we had a chance at getting the iPhone after all!

When the shutters rolled up a staff got people forming a queue for the iPhone and another for anything else. We ended up first in line for the iPhone queue, but offered our place to a Malay couple who actually arrived earlier (the Malay lady was about to start grumbling about us already, we were sure).

For a while we might have regretted letting the couple go first - when a Maxis staff asked them how many iPhones they wanted we thought they mentioned that they wanted 2 each. But luckily it turns out that they only wanted one each. Which meant we got the third iPhone 4. Still lucky, because it turns out that Sunway Maxis was only giving out FIVE iPhones that day. Good grief. And our trip down was not in vain!

The best bit is that we managed to keep it hush-hush from the Chief, who thought we would only go down on Saturday to try! We got to tumpang gembira when we bought the iPhone 4 too, it was as if we were buying it for ourself, haha. When the Chief left work we got the two of us to head to the Maxis Centre at TTDI where we presented the Chief with the iPhone 4 all nicely wrapped in Christmas wrapping and we got the SIM card cut. The weekend was then spent with us copying over all our paid apps to the Chief's laptop, syncing apps and movies, and shopping for a cover and screen protectors.

So soon we'll be getting our iPod Touch back, to be fully utilized for watching movies and tv shows!

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).

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!