Parents vs Grandparents

We've heard it said that parents discipline their kids while grandparents spoil their grandchildren. Something like that.

And in the case of our niece, this is proving to be slightly true. Not that her parents are strict on her (goodness for parents to be strict disciplinarians to a wee toddler?) but with her grandparents the dotage is far more obvious (in addition to the usual attention babies get!).

For in addition to her usual meals, she's getting McDonald's soft serve ice cream to snack on while her dinner's cooking and Cupcake Chic cupcakes for tea time. Her grandmum even had us searching at three Starbucks branches for eclairs for her next day breakfast. When we told our sister about our hunting for eclairs, she commented that bread and butter would have sufficed for her breakfast.

Of course, the reason for our hunting for eclairs was because there wasn't any bread in the house...

Anyways it's probably a good thing that our niece is still too young to fully appreciate that she's being pampered loads by the grandparents, otherwise our niece's parents will have a heck of a time when they get their daughter back!

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...

Buyer's Remorse

'Tis a term we learnt only a couple of months back but something which we are familiar with.

And so it happened that when the iPad 2 was finally launched here we sort of found ourself arriving at MidValley at 9am to queue up together with NaanBleu.

Now, there are some things in life that we think we should experience at least once before we find ourself unable to do so. Bungee jumping is still someone on that list, we think that we'll only be able to experience such when our wallet is as elastic as the bungee rope.

Queueing up to get a hyped-up item is another. But we do draw the line at queueing up for over a day (we were tempted to start queueing up at 11pm the day before, though, as we were driving past MidValley around the time...) but we don't see how we can actually stay in a non-moving line for over half a day, really. What if you need to answer the call of nature? Will others in the queue be good-natured enough to let you keep your spot? What about meals?

Anyways we opted to try arriving at 9am - thankfully parking was still plentiful and the queue, well, the queue was only halfway around the corridor.

Joining the queue, we realized we made one mistake: while we pretty much reminded ourself to bring along a fan, we ended up leaving it in the car. And central air-conditioning in MidValley doesn't start till after 10am. Thankfully we arrived before NaanBleu so we texted her to bring a fan for us, else we'd be sweating like mad the entire morning.

Before the store opened, staff from Machines were walking down the queue, asking everyone in line how many iPad 2s were they looking to buy (a maximum of two) and for which model and colour. Overall, we think they did this quite well, it was well organized. They had cards corresponding to the number of iPads of each model and colour, so once they'd run out of cards for a particular type it meant that said type was sold out.

Well we admit throughout the entire time we were queueing and before the fellows from Machines got to us, we were still in two minds as to whether we wanted to get an iPad 2 or not. We could pretty much justify our purchase one way or another (the Chief had, in a moment of exasperation after trying to disassuade us from getting one during the days prior to the launch, accurately observed, "If you really want it you will find all sorts of reasons to get it.". Mind you, the Chief was probably using reverse psychology but it wouldn't have affected us, we were still undecided about it till launch day...)

Even when it was finally our turn to decide on a model (which was easy: white 16GB wifi-only), during the entire time queueing up till we reached the cashier we were already facing buyer's remorse.

It's interesting. Feeling buyer's remorse when we haven't even paid for the iPad 2 and could have asked anyone else in the line if they were interested in having ours.

But be damned if we would give away the iPad 2 after queueing up for it! So buyer's remorse it was.

The queue progressed fairly slowly, even once when we were at the entrance of Machines. It's a good thing we came with NaanBleu for this, we kept each other company and occasionally chatted with others in the queue, asking others if they were going to get casings as well, or data plans, etc. We even bumped into Caipifruta's Awesomeville Aaron who was there with his dad, the lucky bugger - his dad was getting him a white 64GB (can't recall if it was the 3G or wifi model)!

Once at the entrance they had staff acting as bouncers, slowly letting the line trickle through, and when we got in we realized why...

...there was another queue once inside Machines! By this time it was nearly 1pm and our feet and legs were letting us know that they've been holding our weight for some 4 hours now.

And soon it was all over. We paid up, got the iPad 2 in a big Machines plastic bag, made our way out and started window shopping for casings while NaanBleu bought screen protectors and had the staff fix it on for her. We had ours activated within the store, and after that we headed off to McDonalds for brunch and to get off our feet.

Now this, we found the experience to be slightly tiring but it wasn't all that bad. Machines had it pretty well organized, even though with 4 cashiers payment was still terriby slow but we'd say that there weren't any bad moments to the entire experience. Would we do it again? Probably not, haha, but you can never tell so far with Apple and their magical revolutionary marketing.

Now, the Bon Odori, the idea of having to head out to get all sweaty isn't putting smiles on our face (even though it was a fun experience) but the Chief has not been to the Bon Odori before, and, well, it's almost 5 years since our last Bon Odori...

Spring Cleaning 2011

Perhaps more like Summer Cleaning by the time we write about this. Basically this was what got us thinking about how much of a hoarder we are.

And it all started with just one drawer.

From the beginning we had designated a drawer for electronics - old music players, chargers, cables. And in the beginning, the drawer managed to fit everything in with no problem. This was, of course, some 7 years ago. We could dump in everything and still have plenty of room.



Fast forward to the now, and that drawer is full to the brim. If we only kept cables and electronics that we rarely use in there, then we wouldn't bother about it so much. But as we keep our chargers in there too, we dip into the drawer almost every night (given just how often we Whatsapp and check our Facebook/email/feeds, we actually need to charge our iPhone 3GS twice a day).

So sometimes, things get tangled up in there. And there are cables that we're not too sure of their origins, whether they are mini-USB cables that came with our Canon iXus or with our Sony Minidisc player, that kind of thing.

So, we thought, it's time we tried to organize things.

We admit that we sometimes get rather lofty ambitions sometimes (like trying to get our bathroom to look like one of those rather posh hotel bathrooms, not possible but is something we kinda like to dream could be achieved without any sort of renovation...). We blame iKea for this.



But with just one single drawer we pretty much had a practical idea what to do about it: go get some plastic baggies to organize the stuff nicely.

Now this goal is rather straightforward and ought to take not more than an hour, really...
Step 1: Get a fair number of bags from Daiso.
Step 2: Empty out content of drawer.
Step 3: Organize stuff into bags.
Step 4: Neatly pack bags back into drawer.

Except in our case, we also had a few other stuff in said electronics drawer. Some of it, we are well aware of like our collection of playing cards, but we then came across a traveller's pouch that had some old stuff like a confirmation letter and receipt from a B&B that we stayed at in the Lake Gardens District, not to mention a receipt from the old Malaysian Embassy in London, and oddly enough, Sporeland coins. Also, we find a wee envelope of old passport photos.



So we basically emptied out almost everything from the drawer, and started sorting it all out...

And quite likely because of that traveller's pouch we started looking for where some of the contents of said pouch should go. Starting with the coins.

That got us looking in our wardrobe for a couple of camera film containers we know were somewhere in there, because we thought we kept some coins in them. We couldn't remember what currency, though.

And the search for that began our spring cleaning essentially - as certain things were left untouched for a long while now and have not only built up a layer of dust, but have also herded in a bunch of dust bunnies as pets too.

Generally most our spring cleaning tends to happen in the middle of the night - and at a time when we don't really expect to be doing spring cleaning. We'll pick up an object, note the heavy layer of dust, get a tissue and make it wet, wipe said object clean and trash the now-dirty tissue.

Then, we find that said object (in this case the film containers) we just cleaned isn't really what we were looking for, and now we try another object (this time, a large plastic container with more assorted coins in it).

Repeat cleaning process with a couple more tissues.

And find out now that we have souvenir pressed-penny coins from the US and UK in those containers, mixed together with coins from all over, and it should all be more organized.

Sigh. Now remove all Sporeland coins from both film and plastic containers, and try the coin pouch. Dump all Sporeland coins into coin pouch, and when that is full, the overflow to go into the Sporeland wallet as quick accessible change.

Once this is done, we notice that certain stuff we've not touched in ages have dust all over, hey, that Swatch iRony should go back into its box since we're not wearing it, rather than collecting dust...

More cleaning, more dusting, more taking out old stuff and rearranging things within the wardrobe.

Hey, we've sort of abandoned our organizing of the electronics drawer now.

OK, there's still those receipts et cetera from UK, those should go into the box of UK Memorabilia, bring that out, and then we're reminded of birthday cards over the last couple of years that we wanted to file away in the bigger box of General Memorabilia. Start on that, now...

And it's probably some 4 hours later when we've finally organizing the electronics drawer. Some things made it into the trash can all right but most would have survived for another day...



We didn't make more space, but then again the aim for the baggies was to make it easier to pull out the bag containing all our Apple cables and power adapters!

Hoarder's Horde

Right.

We confess, we're pretty much a hoarder - stuff from our youth have followed us through the ages till now. A wallet from our school days, coins from all over still stacked inside those cylinder camera film containers, ATM receipts from Glasgow (of all things to consider as a souvenir), our student cards (and the lanyards too), and the boxes from all our gadgets and gizmos (even if said gadget is no longer with us!).

And stuff just keeps adding up!

We find cables that we're not sure goes with which device, mp3 players we don't use any more (alas, Sony, Apple's taken over...), old mobile phones (alas, Nokia, Apple's taken over...), card games, old VCDs and DVD games that we don't play any more (alas, Nintendo and Apple's taken over...).

And the thing is, the thing about all these old keepsakes, is that...

...it's so hard to let go of sometimes!

For some things, like old mobile phones and music players, it's more of because we paid quite a fair bit of money for it, hence we find it hard to accept that if we were to sell it, it would probably only fetch a meagre ten to twenty percent of the original price.

While we guess old electronics may be acceptable, the empty packaging boxes, empty glass honey bottles, 5.25" diskettes, old pens from drug companies, paper bags (kept, unused ever again), angpows from years past are a bit hard to explain...

We'll just have to wait till a cleaning fit comes over us and we start deciding what stays and what goes!

Touch Fighter

Okay, we're pretty much a Street Fighter gamer and SF4 had us excited because it marked the return of the old roster of fighters in a rather pretty package. Great graphics, still great gameplay, new Ultra/Super/focus attack mechanics, and... bugger, still a blood cheap boss at the end.

Then SF4 came out for the iPhone, and even with the virtual joystick, the simplified controls worked extremely well. There wasn't the need to do the full motion of controls to perform a special move, now we just needed to push forward and press the SP button. Viola! Instant Dragon Punch.

Combos just got easier.

Only it wasn't really so fair, because for the fighters with charge moves like Chun-Li and Guile, as you'd still need to charge in one direction for a couple of seconds before you can execute the move.

Then came Super Street Fighter 4 for the 3DS, and boy, things got even more simpler (and much more impressive!). Now we have the entire roster of fighters available in Super Street Fighter 4, there's all that alternate costumes and colours, nothing's missing from the game, and they've made all the buttons customizable (and included four more buttons on the touch screen)!

With all the buttons being customizable, now it's even more easier to perform ridiculously difficult-to-pull-off combos!

But yet it all works for the mobile gaming platform. Quick simple fun, anywhere, anytime.

It's just that...we're so spoilt now with the simple controls that we're not sure we can play SF4 properly on the console or arcades any more...

It's Super Dynamic!

Oh looky. Blogger has gone and made some new viewing modes called Dynamic View. So now instead of the usual style (which we had spend a fair bit of time years ago deciding on a theme, and switching twice so far to this current theme), we can go...

Flipcard

Mosaic

Sidebar

Snapshot

Timeslide

It's Super Dynamic Viewing Time!

Generally the new Dynamic View gave us that feeling like when Apple introduced Cover Flow for iTunes, and then for their iPods and iPhones: we need to post up at least one photo per post.

But here's the thing.

Us, we use the NewsRack app to download blog updates to read (the problem with NewsRack is that sometimes trying to comment isn't easy as using Safari itself).

Others use Google Reader. Or probably the sidebar of a blog where the latest posts show up.

And while we do have bookmarks to blogs we keep up with, it's bookmarked for the usual site. So we'll have to manually edit it to get the Dynamic View, but by then we would be too busy reading the post already.

So, uh, Dynamic View, anyone? We guess it'll look pretty if you use your favourite blog as an interactive desktop wallpaper, though.

To All The Girls We Loved Before I

Dear M.

It's has been a long time since we've met. But we hear you're coming back to town! We're excited and can't wait, really.

We remember, we were only twelve when we first met the gang: you, your friends, not to mention your sister and father. A popular bunch, known by many. It wasn't long before we both hit it off, though. We were really taken with your grace, and your coyness at times as you like to hide your face like some shy kitten.

Oh, how we admired your bravery, challenging your father's decisions at times.

When we first met, well...those were good times. Most nights we spent together, time slowed down for us indeed.

Of course, we had our differences. Like your choice to wear magenta hued clothes, and the murderous glares you gave us when we suggested you try on green once in a while as it was our favourite colour. Hey, little did we know then that your sister's bodyguard (rich family that you are from) that you disliked wore green.

Then, a few years later, you disappeared. You and your sister. As you were always fighting with your dad, we knew better than to ask him. Your mum didn't have news about you, too.

We left the gang, not having any way to keep in touch with them as they moved on to further popularity.

Sad to say the few times we could meet up with the gang, you weren't around. Especially some 12 years ago now, when the gang fell in with the '3D graphics' hype, you weren't there to celebrate. We wondered if you were cut off by then, deemed not popular enough. In our heart we knew this could not be true, and the gang, well, the competitive bunch would never offer any answers. Well, once again, it was only much later when we found out you were still around but by then we never did get to see you...

But you came back! 7 years ago you came back!

And you looked gorgeous, M! It was the best we've ever seen you.

We even heard that you were featured in Playboy. Don't worry, we weren't jealous of you. We were honestly glad to have have you back with us.

Those were happy days again. We would come back from work and you would even demonstrate your new martial art skills to us, and while we prefered the speed you performed Ying Yeung stances, you chose to go with the more graceful and powerful Mian Chuan style.

Well...both of us had moved on since. We did meet up once in a while, but rarely.

But we hear you'll be coming back to visit us again. We can't wait.



We do hope this new Mortal Kombat won't be a bomb. Come back and entertain us once again, Mileena!

We still liked you best in Deception, followed by MKII.

Tea Snob

Us. Admittedly.

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

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

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

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

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

Suspicious Manna

...from heaven, so far. Causing us some confusion.

See, today as we were doing some online banking, we noticed that one account had a sudden noticiable increase in balance. Surprising and noticiable because we rarely do much with that account.

We called up the bank and was not able to trace the source of money - customer service informed us that it was their policy not to reveal the source. The best we got was a vague assumption that it was either some form of salary or dividends.

Not that we know of any of that sort going into that particular account, no. And the description on the transaction made no sense to us too.

The Chief denies having anything to do with it. We've yet to check with our parents, however, if it were from family we would have been informed of it earlier. Oh, not to mention for the family it's normally through a different bank. And we've not joined any contests from any banks or anywhere, and for those we should be getting some prior notification.

So here we are with a little bounty. And next thing you know, we get word on Facebook that the Nintendo 3DS has landed on our shores. Limited stocks and all that. Prices out and confirmed.

mmm. We're tempted. Confused and tempted. We could go on a spree, only to find out much later someone coming to lay claims about that cash, like our mum probably suddenly telling us that we should be expecting some paid dividends or interest in our account soon, that's actually belonging to our aunty, please help withdraw and pass it to her, or something to that extent.

Sigh. Admittedly if it was the announcement that the iPad 2 has launched and is available right now we would have probably gone and get one on impulse.

For all we know this could really be a little present to us for us to take and enjoy, and here we are doubting it!

Update: There's something wrong with the WYSIWYG on IE9, hence we'd to reedit everything via HTML!

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!

Dangerous Reads I: The Unsatiable Hunger

Last year Junior gave us one rather dangerous book to read as a birthday present.

Julia Child's My Life In France.

Let us take an exerpt:

"The pièce de résistance for the evening was a mammoth galantine de volaille, which took me three days to creat and had been adopted from a recipe in Larousse Gastronomique. First you make a superb buillion - from veal leg, feet and bones - for poaching. Then you debone a nice plump four-pound chicken, and marinate the meat with finely ground pork and veal strips in Cognac and truffles. Then you reform the chicken, stuffing it with a nice row of truffles wrapped in farce and a fresh strip of pork fat, which you hope ends up in the center. You tie up this bundle and poach it in the delicious buillion. Once it is cooked, you let it cool and then decorate it - I used green swirls of blanched leeks, red dots of pimiento, brown-black accents of sliced truffle, and yellow splashes of butter. The whole wasthen covered with beautiful clarified-bouillion jelly."

Goodness!

When we first started reading the book we immediately had to stop after a few chapters, when Julia Child started talking about her arrival in France.

She has this passionate way of writing and describes food with such detail that, if we were not hungry or eating, we would be while reading her book; and if we were eating a meal and reading her book, we would still get hungry because her meals sounds so much better.

Either way, we lose.

Which is why, while we had this book since last year and Junior's waiting on us to finish the book so he can borrow it, we've yet to finish it (and us being able to finish a book relatively fast). It's like, um, having to lick envelopes to seal them, with the adhesive being salty that for every envelope you lick and seal, you have to stop to drink lots of water, and unable to continue for a while.

We really wonder how to finish this book.

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!

Auction Awareness

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

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

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

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

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

And so the bidding began!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

iGaming

It's a bit of a predicament.

With our Nintendo DS, our games were basically limited by, firstly, our wallet, as games here are not cheap (easily anywhere between RM150-RM200 each for a popular game, goodness we've sunk quite a fair bit into this), and secondly, there aren't too many games so we can basically just focus on what we want most (which would mainly be the Mario and Zelda games, can't go wrong with those, and we must say the Castlevania series on the NDS were entertaining enough with better replayability than the former in our case).

Since we've gotten our NDS (good gosh, when was this? Late 2004? Mid-2005?) it's earned the title of Most Valuable Gaming Asset - trumping PC gaming and all the consoles whatwith the ability to play games anywhere, anytime, even before going to sleep.

Then the iPod Touch came out, and the App Store in all its infancy never did have much games that would cause us to impulse buy. Yes, well, much later on as the App Store started growing and we started using the iPod Touch for more than just mobile surfing we deliberated lenghtily before buying anything on the App Store (because it's in USD and not RM!). The most expensive app we bought back then was probably ToDo, at USD4.99, after trying a few other free to-do apps. Motion-X's Poker Quest was probably one of the first few games we ever bought, too.

Then Tap Tap Coldplay came along and we didn't deliberate for very long. Tap Tap Coldplay's probably still one of the best Tap Tap apps, featuring their best songs from all their albums, unlike the disappointing Lady Gaga Revenge which only featured songs from her first album The Fame, hence there were lots of remixes that weren't to our fancy.

Anyways.

Time goes by and the App Store starts filling up with more and more games. There are ports of old games which hit our Nostalgia button and may probably hit our Impulse Buy button at the same time (ie The Secret Of Monkey Island Special Edition), there are boardgames converted over to the iOS that we will access before going for the Deliberate Buy (Carcassone being the poster boy of a game well done), and then there are games that, due to their popularity, we may just buy if we like the gameplay (like Angry Birds, which we would never had bought if we never did get to try out their Lite Version beforehand, and Robot Unicorn Attack, because of Erasure's 'Always' admittedly).

We've just counted 71 game apps currently on our iPhone (inclusive of the Inception app). There's more we left on our pc without syncing over to the iPhone, due to us not playing them ever (like the Rolando series) or because we have to play something else first (like Simon The Sorcerer 1 before we can play Simon The Sorcerer 2), or perhaps because we've finished the game (like Beneath A Steel Sky).

The point is, thanks to Touch Arcade (and their AppShopper app), we've been on the lookout for more games! More and more games!

So much so that we've no time to finish all our old games! Both remakes of Monkey Island sit unfinished, especially after we've inexplicably lost our save game files and have to replay from scratch, while we spend an absurd amount of time replaying Devil May Cry 4 Refrain, Street Fighter 4, Seventh Guest and Battleheart!

And the games keep on coming especially when they are either priced at USD0.99, or they go on sale from USD9.99 to USD0.99 (the very unexpected Street Fighter 4!)! App pricing? A topic for another time.



OH MY GAH!

And it's not as if we've stopped playing games on our NDS (asides from the fact that there aren't any new games that would cause a Near Impulse Buy), but The World Ends With You does keep track of when we last played, and suffice to say it's not three times a day. Or even once a day.

After all that rambling...

We're actually considering the Nintendo 3DS. Sold out on day one in Japan. Coming out in US next month. Wondering how much the price tag will be once it hits our shores. Should be higher than our NDS, but will it cost almost the same as our Wii? And asides from Super Street Fighter 4, what other games are there? Will it be worth it? Or shall we drown in more iOS games?

Berserk Button

When it comes to cockroaches in our house, they hit our Berserk Button because we can't abide to think of what they may contaminate with their touch (especially when you have absolutely no idea where they have been). See us brandish rolled-up newspaper and bug spray in search for extermination.

Mice don't really trigger our Berserk Button, even though when you think about it they are terrible pests too: they're dirty, they nibble all over, they leave their droppings everywhere. Perhaps we will end up playing broom golf if ever we bump into one of them in our house.

As for lizards, they may leave the occasional dropping after ransacking our rubbish bag for leftovers, but they scurry away oh so fast. Oh, not to mention we don't fancy dealing with a wriggling tail left behind if we decide to do something to said lizard. And there's the fact that you can already see a lizard's insides, what with a lizard not having the decency to have opaque skin, we were not looking forward to see the insides on the outside.

So tonight, here we were, sitting in front of our desk facing the wall, we turned on the laptop and...

...this great big spider skitters along the wall and stops right in front of our sights.

We spent about 5 minutes just looking at the thing. And yes, even took the time to bloody photograph it. Even went up close and personal, and boy, it had large chelicerae (or fangs or mandibles or whatever thing is related to its mouth) too. The entire thing was huge when compared to the usual wee spiders we come across in our previous house. This kind of spiders we expect to find outdoors, not in our bedroom.

We're not sure where we heard it before that it's the smaller spiders that tend to be the poisonous ones, but hey, small or large, with no knowledge in identifying exactly what kind of spider we were dealing with, we do not cherish waking up the following morning only to be greeted by said spider on our face greeting us good morning.

Only after a while we steeled our nerve and attempted to crush it with a bunch of tissues. And as we moved to the tissue box, the spider sensed our killing intent and scurried behind our rack of boardgames, bags and boxes.

Tissues were no longer an option as we would need to sweep it out. Sticking our hand in would only lead to unfortunate accidents. So we went downstairs to get a newspaper and try to find the bug spray.

We couldn't find the bug spray.

We didn't dare leave the spider alone for too long, as it may scurry into some dark corner and hide till we give up, only to ambush us some days later when we decide to take out a board game or when we stuff clothes into our gym bag. Or if not us, our mum or the cleaner when they go about cleaning the house, or our Wee Wog when she potters about in our room.

Arachnophobia it may be but we weren't going to spend all night thinking of an elegant solution to transport the spider out of our house. Not to mention, we haven't really figured how the bloody thing came into our room in the first place. Open window? Toilet window? Ventilation windows somewhere? Attic?

Some swatting and the spider managed to evade us as we chased it from the corner of the windowsill where it lurked, jumping to our bag straps (boy can it jump!), to skittering about the legs of the rack till it went behind our desk (which was up against the wall).

We really needed that bug spray now. We still couldn't find that bug spray.

Back to our room and we decided we need to shift stuff away and get to that spider before it disappears. Shifted the rack away from the corner, pulled the curtains away to the centre, started shifting boxes from under our desk to out of our room, pulled the table away from against the wall (the table was heavy as we have mountains of books on it, and we weren't keen on scratching the parquet floor).

We jumped more than a couple of times when, for example, the carpet brushed against our leg as we were pulling out a box from under the table.

Oh wait, we think we know where the bug spray is!

Rushed down, found the bug spray, came back up, and started spraying places where we suspected the spider could be. Much to our surprise Shelltox doesn't smell as strong as it used to 15 years ago. Still, we were not going to indescriminately fumigate our room just to try and smoke out a spider we weren't sure would be susceptible to bug spray marketed for killing mosquitoes.

In the end, we found the spider behind our table, fallen to the floor, writhing.

Made us feel like a heel for not being able to give it a quick death, and so we swatted it to end the misery.

Now we wonder just how the fuck does Froggie put up with all the insects and lizards and all manners of creepy crawlies he photographs. Perhaps it's because they're not in his room.

CNY Recap, 2011

And...

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

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

Until the reunion dinner.

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

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

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

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

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

Anyways.

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

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

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!