MEALWHAT(tm) interrupts the Bangkok Photolog series to present you this special edition!
We begin with LUNCHWHAT(tm) on the first day at Phuket! After checking in and resting at the hotel, we head to a favourite spot for lunch: Restaurant No 6!
This place serves decent meals that doesn't cost a bomb and most of their drinks are either served in tall glasses with lots of ice, or in bottles with a foam cosy to keep the beer icy-cold.
After some mulling for where to go next, we decided to splurge a bit for DINNERWHAT(tm)!
Two people.
Four dishes.
All of them, mouthwateringly delicious.
Although we must admit, the butter and garlic sauce may be just a little bit too much for two people...
Every morning, for BREAKFASTWHAT(tm) we would indulge in a heavy buffet breakfast consisting of porridge, pastry buns, toast, pancakes, pork sausages, ham, scrambled eggs, juice, and tea or coffee.
On our second day in Phuket, whatwith a heavy dinner the night before and a heavy breakfast in the morning, LUNCHWHAT(tm) saw us taking it easy and sharing just one dish once we arrived at Central Festival!
After some shopping what better way to rest than to indulge in some ice cream?
And after even more shopping later, it was time for DINNERWHAT(tm)!
We decided to walk into Yayoi after seeing a poster of the yakisoba with omelet.
And while we're able, most of our dishes will feature pork!
Day three in Phuket had us going island hopping to Phi Phi Island for most of the day! LUNCHWHAT(tm) was a simple buffet lunch setup that filled the stomach after our snorkeling session.
For DINNERWHAT(tm) we were introduced to MK Gold by the Chief! However, the branch at Jungceylon was a steamboat setup and not the barbeque setup that the Chief intended to introduce to us. Nevertheless the food was still good!
Everything was poured into the bowl and it all came to a boil quickly.
What we're really reminded of with the sauce is the sweet sauce you get when eating dim sum. What else is in that sauce, we've no idea. But it's tasty!
Day four saw us having our meals at Restaurant No 6 again! A very convenient place for food indeed.
Day five was our last day in Phuket! Yes, somehow we either have been having Thai food or Japanese food when dining in Phuket.
Fuji's food was still good, although must make note for Chief to not order the Fuji Green Tea Fit in the future.
The pork rolls were a delight, mixing pork and cheese!
In future trips to Phuket, we will explore Deutsche Kneipe if they still have their All-You-Can-Eat offer, and Hard Rock Cafe (to get the Phuket Hurricane glass!), and perhaps one of the other recommended seafood restaurants!
It was only last year when we first visited Phuket, and now we've gone for a second trip! Better yet, this time we had a longer stay of 5 days and made the most of it!
Interestingly, by "making the most of it", we actually mean "spending time sleeping at the beach".
Our plans were kept simple. Within the 5 days we were there, we would do 2 facials, 2 massages, tan at the beach, swim at the hotel pool, walk about at Jungceylon when Thailand's Sale starts, go island hopping to Phi Phi Island, stock up on food and drinks found only in Thailand, gorge ourselves out on the food at Patong and catch a movie at the SFX Cinema in Jungceylon on our final day.
And by the end of our trip we managed all that (save watching a movie - we would have watched Sex And The City 2 for only 800 baht instead of 1200 baht but timing was rather tight), and more! There was shopping at Jungceylon and at Central Festival, there were aloe vera massages as well, we bought things we never expected, and we slept off all our sleep debt!
This trip was also planned to fully maximize our time in Phuket, hence our departure flights were 7.25am to Phuket and 9.05pm back to KL. Which meant that we'd to leave to KL Sentral at 4am, take the AirAsia Skybus shuttle by 5am so that we could reach LCCT by 6am. Slept throughout the journey on the bus, checked in and then headed on to the Plaza Premium Lounge for some breakfast. Once aboard the plane we didn't get to sleep as we had our pre-booked meals to dig into, although we must admit the quality has diminished from what we hand previously (yes we also had the Asian Fried Rice that williamnyk had!)...
Upon arrival at Phuket International Airport we soon got a cab and slept the entire journey to the Royal Paradise Hotel.
After checking into the hotel at about 9am, we unpacked our stuff and slept.
Even on the following day, while tanning at the beach, we slept soundly for a couple of hours.
The drawback about leaving so early to head to Phuket, especially with only a couple of hour's sleep the night before. But no matter, as it all falls into the plan! This trip was meant to be a relaxing getaway!
So let's see. This year there's been a fair number of shows that we had expectations from, but so far we've been let down now and again. On the upside the Chief has been winning lots of free tickets so we've both been enjoying a fair number of movies too! Let's do a recap on some of the shows...
Book Of Eli. Didn't expect much although from the trailer the first impression we had was, "Fallout!" No expectations, so no disappointments but not really that interesting for us. Miss.
Edge Of Darkness. Mel Gibson still puts on a good show, and the show makes sense in the end, but also not really memorable. OK.
From Paris With Love. We'd no idea what this show was about when we went in to watch it! John Travolta shocked us with a different look and Jonathan Rhys Meyers is still King Henry to us but this comedy was ok.
Percy Jackson And The Lightning Thief. We suppose since we never read the books it wasn't as good as the Harry Potter series. But we were fine with them taking liberties with Greek mythology as it was a modern setting, and Uma Thurman really, really make an awesome Medusa. Watchable.
Valentine's Day. Somewhere at the start of the show we thought, "Love Actually!" We need to watch that show again. What really impressed us about the show wasn't how everyone was connected in some way in the show but the house that Ashton Kutcher stayed in, and Anne Hathaway as a phone sex worker! Watchable.
Shutter Island. We actually saw the ending while browsing at the DVD store. Then went to watch the movie to appreciate the beginning. Not a horror show as we thought it was in the trailers, but nevertheless a good movie. Good movie.
Alice In Wonderland. Most people told us that they were rather disappointed with this movie. We could not see why. It's a slight deviation from the story book (oh our goodness we tried reading the book and wanted to kill Alice) but Helena Bonham Carter made the Queen of Hearts the star of the show! Oh and Anne Hathaway amazes us by showing she can act slightly weird (unfortunately we've locked her as the sweet Andrea of Devil Wears Prada)! Watchable.
Clash Of The Titans 2010. Can we cry? The trailer, especially with the minus one of The Used's 'The Bird And The Worm' giving the action an edgy but great feel, gave us quite high hopes for this show. Major letdown as the 3D version had nothing but 3D Chinese subtitles, while the show, dark to begin with, was darker when wearing the 3D glasses. A visual feast but somehow that was all.
Ip Man 2. Great martial arts show that does as well as the first, although the storyline seems similar. Of course the scene to watch for is Donny Yen fighting Sammo Hung. Must watch.
Iron Man 2. No expectations except a reminder to stay till after the credits. Overall the show was good, Robert Downey Jr entertained, and thankfully there was no need to be a Marvel fanboy to enjoy the show (we wonder how many found the Captain America's shield bit funny). Good movie.
Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time. Another show that we hoped would do well. It did...formulaic. Those who didn't know what Prince Of Persia was all about would be wondering what was with all the athletic jumping and swinging. The conversations between the Prince Dastan and Princess Tamina was entertaining, but somewhere in the show it suddenly felt like Pirates Of The Carribean.
Honestly we had even more memorable shows coming from Lady Gaga's music videos. Speaking of which Alejandro is out!
So we had to pick up our jaws at the bed scenes. But our gripe is, "Why can't BodyJam have choreography like that any more?!"
And tonight we got to watch A-Team!
Also another show with no expectations since we've never seen any trailers, only the poster. Only, this movie is so far in our opinion, the best show we've watched so far for this year. There's a lot of budget for the action scenes like Iron Man 2 has but the humour in A-Team outshines Iron Man 2. This is one show not to miss! Even from the second front row in Cathay we had no difficulty enjoying the movie (thumbs up to Cathay for having seats near the front that doesn't need one to crane up and look left and right just to watch the show)!
Oh and honestly Bradley Cooper in the movie. We want his genes. That wavy hair. That five o'clock shadow. Those eyes. That smile. And disturbingly, as we're not a fan off this, the chest fuzz. We want them genes!
Sigh we guess we'll have to resolve to boiled chicken breast meat for two weeks, more cardio and longer workouts. And make do without the hair.
So an ex-coursemate names his photo album of pictures taken around Glasgow over the weekend, 7 years after we've all left the place. And everyone who'd probably only write a wall post to each other when it's their birthdays or the occasional comment here and there, who you've not heard via email or text nor seen in ages, gets drawn to the photos (us included). It's not as if we've all forgotten each other entirely, there're coursemates already married and living overseas and working all hours and the likes...
Sometimes all it takes is for someone to put up photos, probably tag a few people, and next thing you know it becomes a sort of university fun project.
Like when we posted up our batch graduation photo from Strathclyde with most of everyone in it. Since ours was a developed photo from film, we'd to scan it in before uploading, and the resolution once uploaded was iffy at best when it came to detecting faces. Since we had the actual photo we tagged those we could, then it was up to everyone else to try and make out who's who. That photo had a fair number of ex-coursemates tagging people!
We liked how our friend captioned this photo, 'Hate/miss the staircase'.
And now our ex-coursemates, us included, are going through Kepong Bicep's photos as he's currently there, taking photos of landmarks as they now are and everyone's reliving memories - from prices of meals at China Express to the temperature of the swimming pool at the U of Strathclyde's Centre for Sport and Recreation and all other landmarks...
Nothing like nudging the ol' personal nostalgia to bring people together a short while.
This probably started with everyone on Facebook raving about Kylie's upcoming song 'All The Lovers', and the YouTube links posted along with it. Only we'd not the opportunity to check it out earlier so it was only this week in the midst of all the hectic goings-on that we somehow decided to destress by looking for the music video.
And we must say that it grows on us, once we got over our initial shock at how the music video started and started listening to the song.
Funny, Madonna's music videos never shocked us. Pet Shop Boys' videos never shocked us. Lady Gaga...well, even Telephone wasn't shocking because Kylie shocked us nine years ago with the music video for 'Can't Get You Out Of My Head'. After that video what's some tape over the nipples? Although admittedly if we never watched 'Bad Romance' first and jumped straight to 'Telephone' perhaps we might have been shocked at the near-nudity scenes.
So anyways we'll wait for Kylie's new song, hopefully we'll appreciate most of the songs in her new album (unfortunately since we enjoyed the dancefloor album that was Fever, Body Language and X didn't have too many songs that caught our fancy as they were more pop than dancefloor...). And while we wait, we'll busy ourselves by watching back her old music videos, especially those from Fever. Those were great music videos!
We've got to thank Parlophone for putting up her videos in HD.
Only...why isn't there a music video for 'Like A Drug'? That's our favourite from X!
And for a while now we've had Lady Gaga thematically on our iPhone, with the startup screen from Tapulous' Lady Gaga Revenge as our wallpaper and all ringtones from her songs. We're thinking of making a Kylie theme, but we'll wait a while as Lady Gaga's 'Alejandro' music video will be out soon...
We've been rather late in discovering YouTube Downloader. Prior to YouTube Downloader we've been kickyoutubing any videos we were interested in (not a lot), but when we found ourself occasionally heading to watch Lady Gaga's whacky Telephone music video, we thought it best if we kept a copy handy on our iPhone instead.
Beyonce's 'bad girl' line never fails to crack us up.
Then there were the parody videos, our favourites being Sherry Vine's take on Bad Romance...
...and the Key Of Awesome's Telephone.
YouTube Downloader made us a very happy man by making it hassle-free downloading the vids! Then, of course, iTunes had to inform us that some of the videos that we downloaded weren't able to be copied over to our iPhone. It happens. No biggie. We'd just use iTunes to convert it to an iPhone compatible format.
Leaving it overnight to convert as it was rather late and the file wasn't small, we sync'ed it the next day and what do you know, when we watched it the resolution was compromised. Bloody disappointing. Then we recalled reading the review on YouTube Downloader (we think this was a review on Download.com) about YouTube Downloader being able to convert files as well, so we thought, what the heck, might as well give it a go.
Not only was the conversion much faster, but it kept the original resolution!
Finally, something that made putting videos on our iPhone much easier. Then there were the Gag Che videos that, while in Cantonese which meant we understood less than one third of what is talked about, were still funny (thanks Little Prince for introducing!) and so we snagged everything.
That led us to editing all the information so that it doesn't just clog up our video's section on the iPhone, but is categorized under TV Shows etc. Our iPhone videos section now looks much neater!
After all that, we decided to try using the YouTube Downloader for one more experiment: converting Real Media files to Quicktime format.
And so, we now have the entire Sailormoon Sailorstars season on our iPhone! Happiness is us! No more waiting to use the telly, making supper, then proceeding to slot in a DVD to watch an episode! Now all the episodes can follow us wherever we go! Joy! The moonlight carries the message of love!
Too bad we only managed to convert the Sailorstars season. The first season of Sailormoon were in a slightly different Real Media format, .ram, while the Sailorstars season were in .rm format. YouTube Downloader couldn't convert .ram to .mov as far as we tried, hopefully in the future this will be improved on!
Recently we've actually picked up a slight interest in Portal (after listening to Still Alive and watching some of the Portal YouTube clips admittedly) but never did get around to borrowing the game from someone - for one thing first-person shooters give us vertigo, although alakazen tells us that since Portal's very much a thinking game rather than running and gunning the vertigo shouldn't be so bad, and for another we wondered if our PC could support the game.
What really got us intrigued about the game was GLaDOS. Not the thinking using portals and definitely not because it was a FPS.
Then just last week, we got word that Steam was releasing Portal for free!
Hence no need to wait to borrow from anyone. And we'll be owning an original copy.
So far, we've only found time to play the game twice, and both times we could still feel the vertigo come on (although not as fast as, say, when playing CounterStrike or Left 4 Dead!) and we're quite happy that Portal runs smoothly on our PC...when the video settings are set at the bare minimum. That's fine, since GLaDOS kept us entertained with her exclaimations and the game doesn't really need to be played in high-end graphics to be enjoyed.
Our only gripe? Playing via Steam meant we at first spent the entire night and following morning downloading the 5GB game, and then finding out after that that we need to be connected online to play! We're not sure if we need to maintain the internet connection while we play, like for Command & Conquer 4 or Assassin's Creed 2, but we don't like the internet dependency as set by Steam.
What happens if something happens to our connection, like our modem getting fried?
At least with Good Old Games we can download and play anywhere anytime. At least Steam chose a good game to lure us in. Otherwise we might just forgo the download (and getting games from Steam in the future) and just borrow Portal from a friend. For now, we'll be busy exploring the depths of Aperture looking for cake.
Now we pretty much could have made do with using our old modem, but there was one particular thing that had us got us looking for a new wireless modem router.
See, it all started when William mentioned about playing Scrabble with SK, now that they've joined the ranks of iPhoners. That caught our attention, we never paid much attention to that app in the iTunes Store as we never fancied playing with AI, whatmore needing to pay USD4.99 for it. Asked him and it turns out to be a free app, so we jumped onto the bandwagon for some gametime.
And this pretty much happens.
Prior to playing Words With Friends Free, our data usage mid-April was some 250MB. We'd never really hit 500MB with our Maxis data plan and thought 500MB was a comfortable limit for us, we could Facebook, email, surf, navigate via Maps and not really worry about hitting 500MB. So when we started Words With Friends Free, every time it was our turn and we were free to play we would be looking for word placements. And it being the free version instead of the paid version, advertisements featured heavily in the game, especially after every move we made, an ad will pop up.
Now, come May we checked our usage and saw we were close to the 500MB mark. We weren't really sure how much but thought we were safely within the limit. But our Maxis bill told us otherwise - from the RM100 average to RM150ish! Overshot.
That got us to slow down playing Words With Friends Free unless we're in a wifi area, and so no playing at home.
Until now, that is! Currently we're on par with William, derek, carpe diem, poor SK keeps opening up opportunities for triple word and double word scoring, and Legolas is absolutely trashing us!
Now sometime late last year to the start of this year our Level One ADSL2+ Modem Router sort of gave up on us. Couldn't figure out why we couldn't connect online with it. All the light lit up and all, but we couldn't connect to the web-based manager. Thankfully we still have the old modem supplied by Streamyx, so we switched to that.
Trust us not to realise the simplest solution available, not until we brought it to Computer War for a diagnosis: "kena thunder".
Anyways, there wasn't any urgency for us to get our wireless modem router fixed, since we've not been playing our Wii for quite a while (sadly), neither do we go online with our DS, and we've a mobile data plan for 500MB now.
We were hoping that it was somehow salvageable but we expected it to be otherwise. Better yet was when the guy at Computer War told us that our model only had a 1-year warranty, and that since last year Level One started a lifetime warranty policy on their newer products. Had to start looking at a new wireless modem router, then.
And when we started looking around, we were a bit confused. Prior to our visit to Computer War we had a look at a few other stores, and generally wondered at the difference in prices. The way the products were named didn't help. And yes, while we're fairly capable in techy things we've never been able to follow every bit of techy stuff there is. Like, we're able to fix up our wireless modem router, but get slightly lost when they ask us if we're using PPPoE or PPPoA and what is our encapsulation etc...
And shopping for a new wireless modem router wasn't any easier at first. You see why we're calling it in full? Because all this time we just thought 'router', thinking that all routers would have the functionality of a modem, a router, and wireless networking. The first router we saw was priced about RM60ish, and that led us to think that prices for routers have gone down. Then we saw another router that went for twice that price.
So we started paying a little more attention to what the words said on the box, and got lost reading about G Wireless, N Wireless, N+ Wireless etc. After asking around it was clear that the cheaper ones were just routers without a modem, our previous wireless modem router was a G standard and that N standard meant stronger wireless signal strength. And most brands don't call it a wireless modem router, they term it ADSL/ADSL2+ Wireless Router.
Now we know.
Back to when we had ours diagnosed at Computer War.
Technician says ours is fried, we think, okay, it's time for a new one. The only two brands that offer lifetime warranty are Level One and Belkin. We ask the technician if he has a Level One current model that is similar to what we have. He checks and tell us that there's no more stock at the moment, and offers us the next best thing, a model with the N Wireless standard at around RM250ish. How about the Belkin? There's a G Wireless standard at RM200ish.
The Belkin looked aesthetically much more pleasing compared to the Level One. And based on our experience with the G Wireless standard, we didn't think we needed something faster. Plus, we're not connecting wirelessly to our pc, that's still via network cable so the wireless standards don't apply. And it actually says G Wireless Modem Router on the box! Nearly plain English!
You can pretty much tell which we chose, heh.
And to cap it off, even installation was much easier! The installation CD definitely had the laymen in mind as everything was asked in plain English. And now we're wireless once again!
...when we woke up. After coming home and falling asleep on the couch last night when we got back from our movie. Then we showered and set our iPhone up to sync. After that, we couldn't go back to sleep, try as may. It couldn't be because of the movie we watched, The Descent 2, because we never thought about the movie again after we'd watched it.
There we were, lying in bed thinking about how we missed Glasgow and partly our school days, and how we wouldn't mind reliving some of those times but with present knowledge. Then we remember about homework and projects and assignments and then we give a shudder at how it probably wouldn't be as enjoyable reliving those days.
It's also not because we found out that Glee's third soundtrack, Showstoppers, is out on iTunes and we were tempted to get the Lady Gaga songs.
Perhaps it was because we decided to leave the table lamp on for once, but we never had trouble sleeping with the lights on as we tend to fall asleep with our bedroom lights on before.
By 6.50am we gave up trying to catch forty winks and got up, got shocked at our slightly-haggard appearance and sunken eyes, watered the plants, wiped off the morning dew off Aidan, had our breakfast, showered, and prepped for work.
And am now subsisting on coffee to get us through the day.
So there was this time three years ago when we actually voiced out our thoughts about the iPhone, and wasn't too keen over it because of how it lacked quite a fair bit compared to other phones (yes we will say it still lacks quite a fair bit even now).
Then we played around with a friend's iPhone and what woo'ed us was Safari. Surfing was a bliss. That sold us onto the iPod Touch, being a tad more affordable (compared to the iPhone, that is).
Then from being just a mobile surfing and email device with only web apps you could bookmark on Safari (which required a wifi connection to access), Apple introduced apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch, the ability to rearrange icons, cut-copy-paste, and a fair bit of updates, our iPod Touch became more of a PDA than our phones ever were.
The main reason? The speed and the fast response rate. For example, the time we take to mark an appointment on our iPod Touch calender, we'd only be halfway through typing it on our Nokias.
We've been a loyal fan of Nokia but over the years it's been losing out when it came to the smartphone market...after our Nok7710 there weren't any other touchscreen models, and when everyone was on to capacitive Nokia was still on resistive...and we'd played around with the Nokia X6, and sadly it didn't seem a joy to use at all. Not to mention, program loading times were still bad when you're used to instant loading speeds. Nokia's OS no longer does it for us, unless we're opting for a simple phone just for calls and messaging (but even then we love the threaded messaging that iPhone has!).
Anyways, we were thinking about the iPad.
Would you be getting one?
Our initial reaction? Nope.
There's no camera, or a port for a keyboard, and the price of the iPad or apps for the iPad won't be cheap, all this don't really make the iPad much different from an iPod Touch except for the size and the interface (Mail reminds us of Outlook now).
What would really have made the iPad much more appealing to us would be the ability to play DVD movies and audio music. Rather than having to convert our DVD movies and tv shows to a compatible format, all we'd need to do is to pop in a DVD into the drive and watch our shows on the go anywhere we want. Now that would certainly make it much more worthwhile!
Hmmm we've ripped off a few DVDs to watch on our iPod Touch, but those videos take up anywhere from 500mb to 1gb, limited to how much space we have available (our best moments was having all episodes of BBC's Pride & Prejudice ripped and copied onto our iPod Touch, then having the iPod Touch hooked up to a mobile stand and FM transmitter, so we could watch the series when stuck in heavy traffic). If they included an optical drive in the iPad we could enjoy watching Spartacus: Blood & Sand while lazing in bed without even having to first synchronize the files from pc to iPad!
Never mind. Save money and wait for future generations of iPad to get better. Or perhaps by then we would get a MacBook to do the job instead.
...when we find ourselves totally doing easy options in both BodyCombat and BodyJam when it comes to moves pertaining to jumping (except sometimes for old BodyJam tracks and for the jump knees in BodyCombat's Muay Thai track) because we kinda feel the twinge in our knees;
...when into the second track of Jam/Combat and we feel a stitch in our sides and our stamina is shot;
...when we don't seem to be hanging out so much sweaty dri-fit clothes to dry before washing;
...when, and most obvious, our shampoo and body soap runs out far more faster when compared to three years back when we used to go to the gym about three times a week and shower there.
First we had Angry Birds to occupy much of our time. Not only did the game had many green pigs to kill and birds to launch, they do a pretty good job getting us to come back to the game again and again, first to finish all the stages, then to score three stars for each stage, and with the recent update, a new episode with more stages and a new type of bird.
Now that that's over with, we're waiting for more episodes from Angry Birds to occupy our time. In the mealwhile, we've found two other games that tickle our fancy:
First up was Babel Rising. Was free for a while back, looked simple yet interesting for a god game, and so we figured no harm trying and downloaded the app. We had a good laugh with this, as we visited all sorts of divine retribution against the heathens building the Tower of Babel. Very addictive app, and after a few games we gave in and bought the (in-app purchase) Campaign and Fury Modes.
The Campaign Mode allowed for slight variations in gameplay (ie, the tower begins half built, a level is added to the tower at the following stages) and allows abilities to be upgraded, while the Fury Mode has the workers being invulnerable to certain abilities (blue workers cannot be electrocuted, for instance). In fact the longest we'd played on a single stage was in Fury Mode (normally somewhere within 10 minutes the workers would have overwhelmed us) was just over 30 minutes! The battery drain we faced!
Then we were introduced to Crush The Castle. Admittedly when we first saw this app on the iTunes Store we weren't impressed. Only recently we got around to trying the Flash version online, and it's sort of a mix between Angry Birds and Babel Rising. Instead of birds on a catapult attacking pigs, it's a trebuchet launching stones at castles with people in them. Kings, knights, maidens, all must be killed to clear the stage. Blood splatters everywhere as they scream when rocks fly, walls shatter and everything plunges and crumbles.
Using the trebuchet isn't as easy as the catapult but that doesn't stop us from now trying to score gold for every castle!
Now, if only there was a free version of Canabalt for the iPhone. We find ourselves singing Erasure's 'Always' when we play that. Oh yes, and there's also Canabalt Typing Tutor to try as well...
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.
Recently we just got this text message from a friend (that has a way of, well, irritating people with his attitude) that goes:
Janvier i got fren moving to KJ. Plz show him around, esp food spots. Name [Friend 1's name] n [Friend 2's name], tel [Friend's tel no]
Right. We still remember the last time he asked us for a favour, which include asking us to bring our collection of boardgames to introduce to some of his friends...which turned out to be the majority of his church friends in one of his friend's house. Awkward? Yes. It sort of felt like we were the entertainment he was suppose to bring for the event, sans balloons, monkey-playing accordian and the likes.
Now this. We think he overestimates our friendliness and ease at mixing with people. Just because we can get along with some people doesn't mean we're immediately able to talk to anyone.
The overestimation of our friendliness (if indeed that's what it is) we can take but we're irked at the way we were asked to do this. No phone call or text message to ask if we we could do him a favour, he's got some friends coming down to stay in KJ, if we were free could we show them around, especially when it comes to food areas (the emphasis for food spots here we gather is due to our numerous MEALWHAT(tm) updates on Facebook we suppose)?
But nooooo...just a, "Janvier, I've friends going over. Please show them around." Like we are only too please to do your bidding as and when you want it.
We're not saying that we don't do favours, or that we want people to bend over and grovel, but, ask nicely, can?
The style of the text somehow reminds us of womenfolk in church, who will ask other churchmembers or their children to do these kind of favours (and will do them if asked by others). The only difference here is that we aren't related to this friend nor does his attitude cause one to feel ready to help.
So anyways we're actually incline to refuse, because our normal eating hours will be some 3 hours later than everyone else (say, 10.30pm for dinner?) and we don't think his friends would appreciate waiting till then to discover food spots.
And we're tempted to just reply:
Hi we got horny gay fren moving near your place. Plz douche before meeting him, don't worry he likes it tight and is gentle. Name [fictitious name] tel [fictitious mobile number]
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?
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!
Now just last weekend we celebrated the birthdays of March babies esteban and CherubCel. While most of the planning was done early thanks to OC lad, and it marked the return of thematic birthday parties (as we chose to keep ours simple and somehow it didn't happen for Puddy's birthday). The theme was chosen rather late as everyone chipped in their suggestions and it was up to both birthday boy and girl to agree on a theme.
What with the venue being Cungdinh Vietnam Restaurant at One Bangsar, certain suggestions like 'Topless Night' and 'Tarts And Vicars' certainly spelt Bangsar Social Suicide. And in the end, it was decided that the theme was 'Angels & Demons'!
And the cool bit? Lad informed us that we were to decide which side we were suppose to be on, but not to tell the others. And the end result was that our party of 14 had an even number of angels and demons! Even with the short time to prepare for costumes, everyone had props, and were either dressed in pure white or black and red! Even the birthday boy and girl were on opposite teams! The theme turned out to work surprisingly well!
...yes, we had the other diners giving us double takes and grinning. But we all had good fun.
On the good side...
And at the other corner...
The food at Cungdinh was excellent, and the service was wonderful. Waiters and waitresses discreetly made their way around clearing the table and setting dish after dish, and each dish came with its own specific sauce! The price, we suppose, would also be excellent. Lad has yet to tabulate the bill...
And once everyone filled their stomachs, it was time to parade our costumes, haha.
"Good morning Charlie!"
'Course, not everyone followed the stereotype Christian-depicted angel or demon. Here we have otousan as...we're not sure, but it was horrifying nevertheless.
And everyone started playing with the props! Goes to show that angels can be tempted. Here we have a good girl gone bad...
And the good girl was carrying a rose instead of a wand or a harp (interestingly no angel brought a harp or horn or flaming sword...). She gave that up, which the Angel Of Death (on the demon's side) used to become Tuxedo Mask instead...
And the Angel Of Death's scythe went to the Angel Of Music instead, who took over the role looking far more appropriate...
Demonic transformations were aplenty, leading to otousan changing to The Horny One with three pairs of horns...
...and the rare appearance of the unihorn. Unlike the unicorn which can only be tamed by a virgin maiden, we guess the unihorn tames virgin maidens instead.
It was a merry night and after the present-giving ceremony, the birthday boy and girl went aside to discuss whom should win the Best Dressed Award. The winners?
The winged ones! Germ, with her wings tied to her dress for the angels and lad, with his DIY unfoldable wings for the demons! In fact poor Germ couldn't dismantle her wings until she got home, she had to sit rather uncomfortably in the car on the way to and from the restaurant! Imagine if she had to park at Bangsar Village and walk all the way for everyone to see. Or if we all decided to continue the night by going clubbing or something.
When their kids get married. And then they can celebrate and be happy and joyful. Which was made very obvious in the case of Ivan's wedding.
What can we say? More Klangites are getting married this year. There's gonna be...three? Three weddings, are we right, 'Nic? Or more? It's getting more and more obvious that we're falling out of the loop when it comes to news from the Klangites.
Anyways. We attended Ivan's Klang wedding last weekend, but we can't make it for his upcoming Penang wedding (to the same girl, of course).
Had to get up early for 'Nic to pick us up to make our way down to Klang for hengdai duties in the morning. While waiting for the groom and to head off to the bride's place, some of the others actually mentioned that they were keen for the challenges the zhimuis would throw at them - because they hadn't had breakfast and were hungry! This of course reminded us that we too were hungry, and the mental image of a celery with condense milk kept popping up in our head (courtesy of ethancya and Renzze's wedding!).
Interestingly, since the bride's family stayed in Penang, the bride and her zhimuis actually rented an apartment to hold the challenges! We wonder if they had to rent the place for a month, or for a couple of days only, or how did they go about that...
The challenges were...mild. We put this down to not having enough time. And to top it off, everyone spoke in Mandarin, which left us as the bemused but uncomprehending hengdai.
It started off with the zhimuis applying lipsticks to the hengdais, after which they were supposed to kiss a cardboard until the heart-shaped bit in the center was all covered in kisses. Something to remember: the zhimui applying the lipstick started off by putting on the lipstick properly on the first hengdai...but after that she started going haywire, making everyone else look like the Joker from The Dark Knight.
The most interesting challenge would be a game of Suck-And-Blow using seaweed strips instead of a name card/credit card. This game failed as the seaweed strips tend to stick on the tip of the nose more often than on the lips! The zhimuis at least put some thought into this one, choosing wasabi seaweed strips instead of the normal flavoured ones. There was a good profile photo of NJH and Ty smooching, 'cos the seaweed strip couldn't be seen!
Oh well. The hengdais hit the table spread of food while the groom had his younger brother translate a paper full of chinese proclaimations of love which he then shouted out into the bedroom.
So, the challenges were mild. This was a good thing, because cal_el brought along his Thai girlfriend for the challenges, and she was certainly busy taking photos and notes of the happenings! Their wedding will be coming up later this year and we wonder if she will want to have her own hengdai/zhimui challenge...if the challenges were much more 'creative', imagine what the Thais would come up with!
After the morning's activities and lunch back at Ivan's, we headed back to shower, change, and rest up before the dinner back at Klang.
Leaving the Chief's place in the evening to head for dinner, we decided to head down the Federal, once past the toll after Subang and somewhere along Shah Alam, cut across to get to Kota Kemuning and onto the Kesas Highway, then continue our way down to Klang. We used to do this during our uni days, but have long forgotten the exact route.
And as expected, we got lost.
And found ourself at Alam Idaman. Trying to find our location on Google Maps showed forests with no roads, and calculated routes always took us to Klang via Federal Highway rather than via Kesas. And so we gave up and took the Federal into Klang...
...we could feel our soul slipping away as we slowly crawled our way towards the Klang Bridge.
Miraculously when we arrived an hour late for the dinner, it still has not started! And once seated a Carlberg was put into our ready hands to restore our soul! A cold beer does do wonders for low traffic EQ.
And it was here that we come to realize how happy parents can be when their kids marry. While yes, of course, parents should be happy to see their kids finally tying the knot, most of the time we observe parents either getting sentimental or being rather reserved. Ivan's dad was bursting at the seams! It was obvious where Ivan got his humour and happy-go-lucky attitude from!
Do we need to wish the couple happiness in years to come? Probably no need. But we'll wish them all the best and many great years ahead!
Ok so every now and then, like on late Tuesday afternoons when the iTunes Store puts in fresh material, we'll take a looky for free music, vids, and app recommendations and the likes. Occasionally they'd recommend something that we like, occasionally we'll start from one app, head on to 'apps like this' or 'apps others also bought' and browse till we give up at the sheer amount of apps available that we have no interest in.
Or we might end up with a few different apps, mostly (if not all) free. A good thing is that there's always a 'lite' version of an app, which lets us know if we'd ever buy the app, keep the lite version or delete it.
Especially now that otousan has gotten himself an iPhone, and we're both still fresh comparing apps when we meetup, even we get to know a few more apps that we never noticed before. Well ok mainly otousan downloads games, and the games (as we notice) that normally grabs our attention are well-known games or PC games (ie Monopoly, Command & Conquer, Monkey Island, Beneath A Steel Sky, Zooloretto) while the new games that crop up don't usually get our attention, or, if they did, we've only put in about an hour of gameplay before we forget about the game.
So sometime last week we were hunting about the iTunes Store when we came across the lite version of Angry Birds. We'd never clicked onto the app to see the description of the game before and so, judging from the fact that it spent quite a while on the top 10 paid apps (for the Malaysian iTunes Store that is) we thought we'd give the lite version a try.
Turns out that it was a catapulting game. And to think not too long ago we just pooh-poohed another catapulting game otousan was showing to us. Anyways, we played the free six stages offered, and we thought we would forget about the game after a while.
And given the fact that a stage takes less than a minute to play, we've been replaying this game nonstop.
And paid the skimpy 99 cents for the full version.
Hello, the cause of our battery draining even faster. Who knows how our battery will last when they finally make Street Fighter 4 for the iPod Touch much more worth it...
We begin with LUNCHWHAT(tm) on the first day at Phuket! After checking in and resting at the hotel, we head to a favourite spot for lunch: Restaurant No 6!
This place serves decent meals that doesn't cost a bomb and most of their drinks are either served in tall glasses with lots of ice, or in bottles with a foam cosy to keep the beer icy-cold.
After some mulling for where to go next, we decided to splurge a bit for DINNERWHAT(tm)!
Two people.
Four dishes.
All of them, mouthwateringly delicious.
Although we must admit, the butter and garlic sauce may be just a little bit too much for two people...
On our second day in Phuket, whatwith a heavy dinner the night before and a heavy breakfast in the morning, LUNCHWHAT(tm) saw us taking it easy and sharing just one dish once we arrived at Central Festival!
After some shopping what better way to rest than to indulge in some ice cream?
And after even more shopping later, it was time for DINNERWHAT(tm)!
We decided to walk into Yayoi after seeing a poster of the yakisoba with omelet.
And while we're able, most of our dishes will feature pork!
For DINNERWHAT(tm) we were introduced to MK Gold by the Chief! However, the branch at Jungceylon was a steamboat setup and not the barbeque setup that the Chief intended to introduce to us. Nevertheless the food was still good!
Everything was poured into the bowl and it all came to a boil quickly.
What we're really reminded of with the sauce is the sweet sauce you get when eating dim sum. What else is in that sauce, we've no idea. But it's tasty!
Day five was our last day in Phuket! Yes, somehow we either have been having Thai food or Japanese food when dining in Phuket.
Fuji's food was still good, although must make note for Chief to not order the Fuji Green Tea Fit in the future.
The pork rolls were a delight, mixing pork and cheese!
