Contagious Laughter

Cherating & Kuantan Road Trip: Day 3

2012-01-21T14:45:00.001+08:00

It's the last day of our 3D2N trip and I was glad that we get to wake up a little bit later for the complimentary hotel breakfast buffet.

The breakfast was okay. Not absolutely great food with many choices to pick from but the fresh orange juice was nice. I drank like, 3 glasses of it wtf. ~~Actually, only the orange juice was nice.~~

Thereafter we took a last stroll around our hotel as well as to the ~~dirty~~ beach to look at how choppy the sea was before heading back to our room to pack our luggage and check out.

No picture of the beach because I don't want to ruin people's holiday to Cherating during the monsoon period. Yes yes, you can thank me.

Doing what others may do when they don't have to drive hahahaha....

We are cool because we have sunglasses on hahahaha

Thank you SO much Angie for driving us around for the past few days *touched*

On the way home, we made a pitstop at Sri Jaya because Shu Yi wanted to buy her family's favorite pillow bun from Sin Tong Kok Restaurant.

Will show you the photos later.

My friends and I came across their egg tarts and was trying to guess that flavor in orange color. I guessed it was pumpkin while Angie guessed it was mango.

Can you take a wild guess???

It's carrot.

Yes, carrot egg tart my friend =A=

Angie and Siok Yim were being very adventurous by purchasing a box of egg tarts with the carrot flavor above. I was being very safe because I picked only the pandan and original egg tart flavors.

Very nice teapot and cup :)

Glorious Chinese food.

Food was much better than our dinner on the night before and most importantly, the fish's fresh! I love to eat fish but sadly, I still don't have milky skin like Siok Yim T_T

Pillow bun from Sin Tong Kok restaurant, Sri Jaya.

I have no idea why it's called pillow bun because it definitely looks like a BOLSTER to me instead! If my memory serves me right, I think they have it in 3 flavors - kaya, black sesame and peanut.

I bought all 3 to try and my fav is none other than the kaya flavor :)

~~Bolster~~ Pillow bun.

It's cheap (about RM5-7??) and HUGE!

After a hearty lunch, we continued our journey to down south and stopped by again at Bentong because we really wanted to try the "famous" dessert shop - Kow Po Coffee Shop.

There's this great hype about Kow Po for being one of the famous ice cream shop in Bentong and it's a must-try whenever we are there and hence, we deliberately made a trip there again just for it because it wasn't opened when we were there on the first day of our trip.

Let's see what's the hype all about.

Ice kacang and cendol.

We ordered 2 bowls to share because we were still very full from our lunch earlier and instead of asking us what flavors we would like for our ice-creams, we were given vanilla and chocolate randomly.

After I read from the internet, apparently their durian, pandan and coconut ice creams are the popular ones!! CIS!!!

My verdict? Overrated. Again.

I admit that their ice-creams are smooth but other than that, I don't find anything great to shout about. Sincerely, I thought the ais kacang that we had on day 2 was even better wtf. Or rather, we can easily find better ice-creams in KL or PJ. Sorry people :(

And.....

DAMN YOU BLOGGERS FOR EXAGGERATING YOUR REVIEWS!!!

Do drop by if you are at Bentong and needed something cold to cool down. Don't make a trip all the way over just for it. Save your petrol and toll.

Kow Po Coffee Shop
No 2, Bentong Heights
28700 Bentong
Pahang
10am-7pm, closes on every alternate Monday
(located at the row of shop lots opposite the bus terminal)

I insisted to have a group photo because it's a norm for any trips!

Last group shot :)

Overall, the trip was fun but I must say that I'm a little disappointed by the overhyped food reviews by the bloggers about how awesomely ~~orgasmic~~ great the food was for all the places we went to only to find it to be just an "okay" or "good". Not to-die-for.

But Hai Peng kopitiam is a musttttt go!!!

When you are at Kuantan, you might want to try out Satay Zul because it's apparently very popular too! Satay Zul is listed in our itinerary too but we were too full to eat anymore so we decided to skip that since we can have *cough* Kajang satay *cough* in Klang Valley.

Sorry if I offended any Kuantanese readers for saying your food is "okay" and "good" because I reckon people need some honest reviews here. Blame on the food bloggers who created such high expectations on us!

Read our Day 1 here.

Read our Day 2 here.

Have a great weekend ;)

Yin & Yang

2012-01-10T23:11:00.002+08:00

I'm so happy to share the news that my baby girl, Apple, is officially married!!!

We are both of the same age, however, she's not my primary/secondary/college/university mate. I got to know her back in my previous company where she's from the media agency while we were her client. Although we don't deal that much together but I guess fate is a very funny thing - you may not talk or see a person often but somehow, the bond is there.

Even after I've left, we are still very close and she's mad happy that I'm currently handling her favourite skincare brand hahaha wtf.

Apple looking absolutely stunning that night!

I'm so glad that she has found her happiness while many of us haven't.

She invited me to the biggest event of her life last Sunday and knowing that I don't know anyone there, she was a little concerned for me but I can't possibly say 'No' hence I went. Alone. And it didn't turn out as bad as what I've expected ;)

Uncle... Y U PHOTOBOMBED US? Y U NO SIAM??

By the way, I love all her wedding videos! Big production man LOL!!

I'm so happy for you, darling. Really :)

This Sunday I have another wedding to attend!! Isn't it crazy?? Why are all the girls of my age getting married so early?!? ~~*stress*~~

Anyway, if you have functions to attend and putting on full make up is inevitable, pleaseeee double cleanse! I know many girls out there are lazy and prefer to buy an all-in-one cleanser+make up remover but trust me, it's NOT enough!!

I rarely have full make up on so must camwhore wtf.

No matter how good your cleansers are, if you tone your face with a toner and cotton pad, confirm you'll still see traces of make up left behind! Even though I don't apply make up often but each time I do, I make sure that I double cleanse with a water-based remover and a mild cleanser. Cannot be lazy!!

HAHAHAHA CHECK OUT MY YIN YANG EYES AFTER REMOVING MAKE UP!!!

Yes guys, that's how different we girls look after removing make up hahaha FYL!!! Even my eyes are significantly smaller without eyeliner and mascara :p

If I have time, perhaps I'll share my "trademark" make up steps with you all.

Why trademark?
Because I am only good at applying the same colour and the basic stuff hahahahaha

Cherating & Kuantan Road Trip: Day 2

2012-01-03T00:15:00.001+08:00

On Christmas day, we woke up at 5am to catch the sunrise at 5.30am and just when we were all ready and stepped out of the room, we realized that it was drizzling -____-

And so we went back to catch a couple of winks before breakfast because we were tired. ~~Can't fight the sign of aging.~~

Breakfast was what we're anticipating since the night before and it was also Shu Yi's favorite place for breakfast - Hai Peng Kopitiam, Kemaman.

Road Trip Tip #8: Share food with your friends so that you get to try a variety.

Hai Peng Kopitiam.

I absolutely love the setting of the place - the old school style. I mean, check out the long stainless steel tables and benches outdoor! How cool is that?? :D

Menu, our different preference for hot drinks, kaya toast & buns.

Nasi dagang.

~~Just in case you are not Malaysian enough to know that :p~~

Besides the toast and buns (I love the kaya bun so much! So soft!), all of us love their packet fried meehoon. It was fried with some belacan/chilli paste that makes the meehoon so tasty and different from what you can find elsewhere! Try that when you were there! The nasi lemak is also decent and the belacan is spicy enough too. Oh, the nasi lemak is a tad bit oily ok! Nasi dagang (one of HP's specialty) is something that people will either like it or don't. My other 3 girls ordered half boiled eggs and we were fascinated by the way it was being served. The waitress brought over the eggs in 2 metal cans filled with boiling water and covered them with saucer plates. We were then told to leave it for 7 minutes but my gfs thought it was a little overcooked so next time you guys might want to leave them for 5-6 mins only for it to be perfectly cooked.

(No photos of other food because they're in Siok Yim's camera)

Oh gosh, please try their coffee! It is so "kawww", I'm sure that'll keep you awake for the rest of the day and after all, Hai Peng is famous for their coffee! You can also buy the commercially packed 3 in 1 coffee back as souvenir.

Hai Peng Kopitiam
K-3753, Jalan Sulaimani, Chukai, Kemaman, 24000 Terengganu.
GPS: 4.2351, 103.4225
Tel: 09-859 7810
GPS: 4.2351, 103.4225

Since it drizzled that morning, we can't go to Gua Charas (again!) so we decided to proceed by visiting to the Cherating Turtle Sanctuary.

Entrance fee is now waived but you may donate.

Maklumat Am Penyu (as written on the board).

"We could've been swimming in the wide ocean but now we are confined in this tiny little pool...."

Ninja (sea) turtle kick!!!

Baby turtles.

I was glad that we weren't being charged any entrance fee because there really isn't much to see! There are 3 pools - for baby turtles, medium sized turtles and large turtles respectively. The pools are small and dirty but to their credit, the place isn't smelly as I expected it to be.

Anyhow, please donate to keep the place going. Not sure if the generations after us are still able to see sea turtles or not but really, can people stop eating turtle eggs already?? Chicken and duck eggs not enough to satisfy you??? Kanasai.

(Breathes in.... Breathes out...)

Driving along the road from Kemaman back to Cherating, we made a detour to the fishing village and there we get to see how the locals operate their humble little business selling the collectively same things - lekor rebus, satar/sata, keropok lekor, etc.

Lekor rebus.

In KL or PJ, keropok lekor (long, thick & chewy type) or keropok keping (thin, crunchy type) can be easily found at the road sides or pasar malam.

However, at the East side of Peninsular Malaysia, lekor rebus is the local food so we stopped by to purchase a packet to try. As you can see from the photo above, the lekor was rebus (boiled) instead of deep fried and I must say, I'm not quite used to the taste of it. The texture is a little slimy, chewy and has the strong fishy taste. I'll still stick to the KL/PJ version though =x

We then drove slightly further to buy something that all of us have never tried before - sata/satar.

Plenty of gerai along the road in this fishing village.

Sata or satar.

Satar is a blend of boneless fish marinated in spices, with a little coconut, wrapped in banana leaves and grilled over a charcoal fire. It is both sweet and savory and light tasting (From Massachusetts to Malaysia website - great read to find out more about Malaysian food).

Comparing sata to lekor rebus, give me sata, anytime.

Sata tastes very similar to otak-otak but lighter, sweeter and with stronger coconut milk taste. I actually liked it! :)

Road Trip Tip #9: Always try the local delicacies. That's the whole point of traveling, right?

She sells seashells by the seashore...

The day before, we were unable to savor the famous S Katong curry laksa because we were late and they were already sold out!! Feeling dissatisfied, we made a trip back to Kuantan again just to eat that! We are that devoted to food or what?? LOL!

S Katong Curry Laksa.

So, what's all the hype about? What's all the raves about that made us going back there again and again just to freaking eat this bowl of laksa? Shu Yi's colleague, who is a Kuantanese, highly recommended this place for curry laksa as he thinks it's probably the best laksa in town. Even better than the curry laksa at Hoi Yin!

It's really tasty. The curry soup is flavorful with lots of santan (coconut milk) but nothing screams "WOW" in our opinion. I find that this bowl of goodness above is comparable to my all-time favorite laksa at ss2 food court.

But if you are in Kuantan, you might want to try this laksa out because I wouldn't mind if I'm there again ;)

Pumpkin Sago.

In the same coffee shop, I ordered their dessert of the day - the Pumpkin Sago and it's actually pretty decent.

After the curry laksa above, we still have plenty of time to kill before high-tea and dinner so we drove to the Kuantan river for a stroll.

And Kuantan river.

Omg the Kuantan river.

Like the river of teh ais wtf.

Not only the water is dirty, the "KUANTAN" signage was spelled as "KUA_TAN" with the missing "N" and I have to photoshop the letter in because it's such a eyesore for my readers to see.

Kuantan river is a popular fishing place for the locals and since we have nothing to do there, we decided to head straight to one of the popular beach in Kuantan as well as a "must-visit" place for the tourists - Telok Chempedak.

I love beach so my resolution every year is to visit to at least 2 beaches for whether I've been there before or not.

The only McD in Kuantan.

Telok Chempedak has the nicest McD I've ever seen in Malaysia! It has this very resort-like design that is overlooking the beach and most of all, the place is clean and well taken care of!

Telok Chempedak.

The weather was perfect - cloudy and super windy.

Oh! Need me to prove how windy the place is?

So windy that my bangs became side parting hahahaha

Us with our colorful tops on Christmas day!

The beach.

To their defense, I've googled over the net and found out that the water isn't that dirty actually. Due to the fact that it was a monsoon period when I was there, the tide is high and the water is dirtier than usual.

You may ask - since it's monsoon and we can't swim nor surf, what can we do there? Well, let's say that we decided to make full use of the strong wind on that day ;)

We bought an Angry Bird kite! Colourful right? :D

That's the last time you get to see Shu Yi with a smile on her face because the Angry Bird kite got her pretty angry thereafter hahahahaha

Honestly, we have never flown a kite before and we have no idea how to even start! Putting all of our common senses and possible reasonings on how to fly a kite by observing the wind, etc, we still fail FTS.

After hours of trying and admiring how others were able to have their kites flying mightily in the sky, we decided to give up and put the blames on the damn kite. MUST BE THE KITE'S PROBLEM!!!

Super windyyyyy~

Photo above was taken before I got sunburned. Can you believe that?? With such cloudy and windy weather, I thought it was okay not to apply any sunblock on and I ended up sunburned!! How is that possible??? T_T

After hours of running around trying to lift that damn Angry Bird, we were eventually hungry so we drove to the row of old gerai nearby East Coast Mall for the relatively popular mee itik (duck noodle) and ais kacang :)

Ais Kacang.

Popular in Kuantan but not that great in our opinion.

Tong Koon Mee Itik.

So crowded and popular but honestly, nothing shouts "Awesome" that will bring us back there again and again.

Am I the person who's picky about food or rather all the "popular" food in Kuantan is overhyped? :( I find them good, but lacking the "WOW" factor. Or maybe I expected more to begin with.

After the duck noodle, we wanted to try the local otak-otak too so we randomly picked a stall that sells them and settled down.

Gerai Pak Soh that sells Sata and Otak-Otak.

Eh, got people check-in 1 okay don't play play.

The price and the dude who grilled our otak-otak (pun intended).

Kuantan's Otak-Otak.

You know how different is Kuantan's otak-otak compared to Muar's? Not only it's sweeter, the fish paste is also being wrapped together with....

...grated coconut!! Special, no?

Again, it's either you liked it or you don't. I actually liked it ;)

Article write-up about Sata and Otak-Otak was hung at the basin area.

Not long after, even before our otak-otak could digest, my friends already suggested to have dinner before the day gets too late. Omaigod.

Looking for cheap and tasty seafood ala Malay style in Kuantan? Look no further than Ana Ikan Bakar Petai!

Ana Ikan Bakar Petai, Kuantan.

The thing about being a popular eatery is that many others would want to open a similar restaurant with similar name in hope to confuse the people. The real Ana Ikan Bakar Petai is apparently the one facing the sea.

Like the one we went to.

Before this, we almost went to another Ana Ikan Bakar Petai (not sure if that's the branch or not) which was situated along the highway but after asking 2 locals about it, they directed us to this one instead.

Road Trip Tip #10: Never be shy to ask the locals for directions or recommendations. Just remember to be polite and courteous!

Dead stingrays and fishes.

Dead squids, prawns and clams (lala).

The rule at Ana Ikan Bakar Petai is... 1) Grab a seat/table first 2) Pick your seafood 3) Decide on the style to cook your choice of seafood 4) Provide your table number 5) Go back to your seat and wait.

That night, we picked a stingray, squid, a packet of clams and 6 pieces of prawns - all cooked ala the Malay style.

Spicy clams, deep fried squid, grilled stingray with petai, sweet and sour prawns.

p/s - By the way, petai is called the sator beans (parkia speciosa) while some call it stinky bean too. There! English class in my blog!

I'm a very Malaysian girl. I grew up eating a variety of food and I personally love Malay and Indian food very much because they are spicy. However, the clams were salty, the batter of the deep fried squid wasn't crunchy, belacan for the stingray wasn't the best I've had and the prawns weren't fresh.

I was very disappointed. And this is coming from a Chinese girl who loves Malay food :(((

Medan Ikan Bakar Umbai Pernu in Malacca wins hands down. Similar concept but greater in taste.

On a positive side, can you freaking guess how much our dinner above cost???

RM65!!! WTF and they were all seafood (including drinks too!)!! So cheap!!!

My piece of advise to you if you are visiting to this place - PLEASE BE THERE EARLY!

I'm not kidding. The place is huge with double story but by 7+, the place is packed to the brim! And food seems to take forever to arrive! At the moment, I was glad that we were there early at about 6pm.

Finally, after a long day out, we were finally back to our hotel to shower. The weather was being very kind to us for knowing that we really wanted to chill by the beach listening to the sound of the waves with beers and chips in our hands, the rain stopped. And our last night in Cherating was complete.

It was really windy and cold that night. Isn't that awesome??

My favorite moment of the entire trip was that night where we sat there chatting and listening to the sound of the waves crashing.

I may have the city girl look but I'm actually a country girl at heart :p I love the nature. Do I sound convincing to you??

Oh! Look at how high the waves were behind! It's freaking scary I'm not kidding you but I was being really stubborn that I still want to sit as close as possible to the beach so others were left without a choice but to follow suit :p

Road Trip Tip #11: If you are going to the country side, be as close as possible to the nature. You don't get that in the city.

Before I end this, let's be frank with yourself. In most trips, you or your friends are bound to have arguments with each other and at the end of the day, this tip is important:

Road Trip Tip #12: Persevere and do not start a fight. If it really happens, never be afraid to patch things up.

Yes, it takes courage to start a fight with your friend but it takes even greater courage to apologize and patch things up. Think about it yourself after reading this.

I've been to countless trips with friends (since I love to travel) and I dare to say that I've learned a lot from this trip through my friends because they showed me the true meaning of friendship and how other petty things do not matter anymore because friendship is so important to all of us.

Gosh, I love them so much! :)

Cherating & Kuantan Road Trip: Day 1

2012-01-01T02:55:00.004+08:00

My first post for the smacking new year and I thought I should write about something new and fun!!

By the way...

Happy New Year everyone! ^^

How was your Christmas going last year? Did you have a great one?

I did not expect myself to be invited for a 3D2N trip for Xmas last year and needless to say, I was very excited! Excited because I'm going on a trip with the people that I really love :)

We were scheduled to depart at 6am on the 24th and since I had Christmas BBQ party with another group of beloved friends the night before, I ended up catching only 2 hours of sleep before dragging my zombie self on this road trip.

We made a few pit stops along the way up to Cherating and our first stop was Bentong for breakfast. According to our itinerary, we were supposed to eat at Kow Po coffee shop but I don't know what happened and we ended up at a random coffee shop instead.

Sorry to start this entry with an ugly photo of myself because this is the only photo I have for our breakfast at Bentong FML. Yea, candid sucks.

Food wasn't that bad and apparently with 1 look, the locals can tell if we are from Bentong or not wtf.

Road Trip Tip #1: Eat whatever you can find and don't starve yourself because you don't know what lies ahead.

Must post flattering photo of self to make up for the ugly photo above hahahaha

Road Trip Tip #2: Camwhore a lot when you are having fun or while you still have the energy!

The 3 who doesn't have to drive.
L-R: Siok Yim, myself and Shu Yi.

Cannot leave Angie out although she has to drive!

We told her to just smile and don't need to look at the camera LOL!!

We had a lot of fun in the car ;)

Continuing our journey to Kuantan, it rained so we have no choice but to give Gua Charas and Hutan Lipur Sg Pandan waterfall a pass :(((

Yes, I was very disappointed because I'm quite an outdoor person and I was anticipating some outdoor activities like climbing and trekking (Gua Charas famous for its Sleeping Buddha) or dipping my legs and play with water (Sg Pandan waterfall) but I got none of that!

Damn you rainnn!!

The 2 SYs (Siok Yim and Shu Yi) really wanted to visit to this Temple of Emperor Gold Dragon (Lao Zi Temple) so while waiting for the rain to stop, we took a little detour to East Coast Mall (the biggest mall in Kuantan) to buy some chips and beers before returning to Lao Zi Temple.

Here's a little info given by the 2 SYs as they read from the internet - Lao Zi temple is famous for the Golden Dragon - which is the longest man-made structure in the world!

The entrance to Lao Zi temple starts from the Dragon's tail...

...and ends at the Dragon's head.

The walk is about 1km long and it is believed that after walking through, a person will be blessed with good luck and fortune.

Okay, let me be very, very honest here. Sorry if I have readers from Kuantan and I might offend you guys but I was very unhappy after visiting to this place.

Firstly, the structure of this Golden Dragon is SO POORLY MAINTAINED! Besides the tail and the head where they were newly painted, the "body" of the dragon is nothing but pathetic. The cracked cement floor wasn't repaired nor kept clean and the walls are dirty. The moment you start the journey, you are left without a choice but to complete the 1km walk and throughout the journey, all 4 of us felt extremely unsafe and uneasy.

Can't they at least do something to make visitors feel a little safe?

After completing the walk, we were again, disappointed. The place is really rundown, old and dirty! There isn't many things for us to check out either!

You know what make things worse? Before leaving the place, we were ordered/demanded by a lady (whom I believed she runs the place) to donate money before leaving! Seriously, I wasn't a pious person and I sincerely don't mind donating to temples and all but I felt that being shouted at/forced to donate is just so wrong!

(By the way, we've already donated at the box placed in front of the Dragon's head beforehand)

Road Trip Tip #3: Don't let stuff like this spoil your mood.

Road Trip Tip #4: Blog about it to avoid such incident ruining other people's day.

After that visit, it was already pretty late and a few eateries that we wanted to try out were either sold out or closed but we managed to settle at another pretty "popular" place recommended by bloggers - Restaurant New Taj.

Sadly I do not have photos of the food (Siok Yim has the photos in her DSLR!) and despite being really hungry, we don't find the food to be extremely great actually. Yes, they serve pretty good Indian food but the raves over the net about how tasty it is has gone a little overboard. They are similar to what we can get in KL/PJ!

After a hearty lunch, we finally checked in to our hotel in Cherating (which was about 45mins drive away from Kuantan town). The hotel we stayed in was The Legend Resort, Cherating. From their website, they claimed to be a 4-star hotel but I guess you should lower your expectation to avoid any disappointment.

Our "love nest" hahahahaha

Our lovely balcony

(to which we did not utilize because our room wasn't facing the beach *sad*)

All in all, the room's clean but we were unfortunate to get a toilet that has a little problem in flushing so to be on the safe side, we did our "big business" using the toilet at the lobby hahahahaha FTL!!!

A couple of hours later, we drove to Chukai, Kemaman for dinner.

Don't have to drive nor navigate hence plenty of time to camwhore at the backseat XD

I know Siok Yim is pretty but sorry guys, she's taken! :p

If you are in Cherating (Pahang), please drive to Kemaman (Terengganu) for the famous stuffed crab at Restoran Tong Juan and I'm sure you won't regret it :)

Clockwise from top left: Tong Juan Restaurant, stuffed crab, steamed fish, mixed vegetables, kam heong lala and grilled tiger prawns with garlic.

You may be curious - does this restaurant lived up to my expectation? Are those stuffed crabs really that delicious?

Let's just say that you have to try them yourself to judge. I personally like the stuffed crab as the shell is packed with crab meat and it saved me the hassle from eating it with my hands. Not to mention that it's tasty too. Steamed fish is fresh but I was expecting the gravy to be a little stronger in taste as I find it a little too bland. Mixed vegetable is well, just mixed vegetables - ordered to compensate the guilt we felt from the amount of seafood we consumed that night. Kam heong lala is very fragrant and I love the amount of cili padi used to fry them with. Grilled prawns with garlic is 1 of our favorite dish that night! The prawns were huge and the generous amount of fried garlics stuffed at the back of the prawns make this dish a great one. I also noticed that many diners ordered fried rice so I guess you might want to try that out too when you pay Tong Juan a visit :)

Restoran Tong Juan
K117, Jalan Sulaimani, Chukai, Kemaman.
Tel: 09-859 1346
GPS: 4.231314, 103.428383
(Do call for booking if you are going in a big group)

Road Trip Tip #5: Always have a GPS and a smartphone when you are on a road trip. GPS to navigate while smartphone to google info and as a backup GPS.

Road Trip Tip #6: "Check-in" to check out how popular the place is! Or if you have no idea where to eat, look out for the place with the most numbers of "check-ins" and you won't go wrong.

On the way back to Cherating (we have been crossing the Pahang-Terengganu border so many times on our first and second day there, it felt like we traveled so much and far :p) we stopped by at some supermarket to buy Viennetta.

Siok Yim said that in order to have Christmas "feel", we have to cut cake but since we were unable to find any cake shop around, we settled for Viennetta ice-cream cake instead.

Our little party in the room ^^

We actually bought a carton of beer (18 cans) but in order to display our innocent side to the public, we decided to put up 2 cans of beer only as illustration purposes. LOL!

Besides, we also found out that this hotel doesn't provide any teaspoons nor plates like other hotels! On top of that, the mini refrigerator isn't cold enough so our Viennetta began to melt. We were left without a choice but to use Shu Yi's penknife to cut the cake and we ate it with our hand =.=

Road Trip Tip #7: Great to bring penknife as protection because in case of emergency, you can use it for other purposes too.

Please don't tell us what you've cut before with your penknife T_T

Us eating like we're from a 3rd world country wtf.

We went to bed rather early at around 1am as we were all so determined to catch the sunrise at 5am. I was extremely unfortunate to fall sick a few days before (was down with flu and cough) this trip so I did not have a good night sleep. I was coughing for the whole night so I have to walk around and sit up straight :((((

Terribly sorry to the girls for having to endure the noise and I was sooooo afraid that I might infect them since we have to sleep together for 2 nights!

Okay, this is the end of our Day 1! Will blog about our Day 2 soon! ;)

2011-12-28T22:50:00.004+08:00

I had a wonderfully relaxing holiday to Kuantan & Cherating during the Christmas with my awesome friends and I have just transferred all the photos to blog about the road trip!

If you are looking for a short and cheap getaway in Malaysia and you don't mind driving around with your friends, be sure to check out what my friends and I did in Kuantan & Cherating for 3 days 2 nights!

Lots of love.

I'll be sure to blog soon! ~~I should really be more hardworking in blogging dammit.~~

See you soon!

Ipoh Mali Makan Trip

2011-10-26T22:50:00.002+08:00

Happy Deepavali to all my Indian friends and readers!

Since it's a public holiday today and I managed to complete some of my reports, I thought it's time for me to update my abandoned blog! As I was browsing thorough my pile of photos, I can't decide on which to blog first and decided to pick the topic that I think most of you would be interested in.

Yeshhhh! It's yet another makan trip entry with friends :D

Since we have long holidays during the Raya and Merdeka week, my friends organised a day trip to Ipoh and invited me to join them since I haven't been to Ipoh for the longest time. When Malaysians talk about good variety of food, we always think of Penang and Malacca - forgetting that this little town in Perak has a lot to offer too.

Sadly to say, this is an incomplete makan entry for Ipoh because everywhere was crowded and we don't get to try out a few of the popular eateries :( Albeit not being able to post my feedback on those popular eateries, I'll still post up the photos and details for you guys to try out yourself! Just tell me that you love me now!!

So, are you ready to jot down the details of the popular places to eat in Ipoh? You have pen and paper with you? Ready to grow fat with me? Ok, let's proceed!

We started our journey early to up north hoping to have dim sum as breakfast but our hope was diminished the moment we saw the crowd queuing in front of our first destination - Foh San.

Foh San, Ipoh.

Foh San is apparently one of the landmark in Ipoh for dim sum and it's a "must try" when you are in town. I was being told that Foh San has recently moved to this new building as the place's pretty old and small back then. Sincerely, I've never seen any dim sum restaurant that huge in my life! "Best" part of all? It's crowded and people are queuing outside for a table!!

Restoran Foh San Sdn Bhd
51, Jalan Leong Sin Nam
30300 Ipoh, Perak.
Tel: 605-254 0308
(6.30am-2pm; Closed every Tuesday)

Since we have a long "makan list" to accomplish, we decided not to wait for Foh San and hopped across the road for another alternative - Ming Court.

Ming Court Hong Kong Tim Sum, Ipoh.

But look at the crowd T____T

I think we were destined of not getting any dim sum on that day because we were told to wait for quite some time for a table and we decided to just forgo our dim sum breakfast instead.

Many people told me that Ming Court serves better dim sum and provides better service than Foh San despite their small and humble shop. I'm not sure how true it is as I don't get to try them out personally. Maybe when I do in future, I'll post my feedback here again :)

Ming Court Tim Sum Sdn Bhd
32, 34, 36 Jalan Leong Sin Nam
30300 Ipoh, Perak.
Tel: 605-255 7134
(Closed on every Thursday)
Located opposite Foh San

There's another popular dim sum place just a stone throw away from Ming Court and Foh San by the name of Yoke Fook Moon and the place has a very classy and expensive exterior and after a little research over the net, their dim sum is indeed, a little upscale compared to Foh San and Ming Court. But their dim sum is fresh nonetheless and they are opened till 11pm!! :D

Restoran Yoke Fook Moon Sdn Bhd
67-69 Jalan Leong Sin Nam
30300 Ipoh, Perak.
Tel: 605-241 6589
(6am-10am, 6.30pm-11pm)
Same row as Foh San

Besides being famous for dim sum in Ipoh, how could people not heard of Ipoh hor fun right? We adjourned to Thean Chun coffee shop for their popular "kai si hor fun" a.k.a shredded chicken kuey teow, caramel custard and pork satay.

Thean Chun coffeeshop, Ipoh.

Full house, again!

Clockwise from top left: Sotong kangkung, meehoon soup, pork satay and popiah.

Our breakfast.

We were unable to secure a table at Thean Chun and ended up at the coffee shop next door. However, we were allowed to order anything from Thean Chun over to this coffee shop EXCEPT for... hor fun. T______________T

Reason given was, this particular coffee shop has their own hor fun stall too so in order to avoid conflict, customers are not allowed to order hor fun from Thean Chun fts.

So, we ended up with a plate of sotong kangkung, meehoon soup, popiah and pork satay. Sotong kangkung was okay to me because I'm not a big fan of this dish but my friends loved it. Meehoon soup was just... meehoon soup. Nothing to shout about. I love the popiah as it's stuffed with lots of crunchy pieces of I-don't-know-what inside.

Pork satay's good too with no fats but I find their peanut gravy a little too watery. The way the satay served is pretty interesting too. Each time, the uncle will place about 10-15 sticks of satay and walks away. When you need more, he'll top up for you and when you are done, he'll come over to charge according to how many sticks you had. That so to say, everything is based on trust and if you decided to cheat by throwing the sticks away and whatnot (please don't do cheapskate thing like that! Have some integrity!), the uncle wouldn't know. It's only RM0.60/stick by the way.

Oh, we tried to order their famous caramel custard but it was all sold out :((((

Thean Chun coffee shop
73, Jalan Bandar Timah
Old Town Ipoh
30000 Ipoh, Perak
Tel: 605-255 3076
(8am-4.30pm; Closed on Thursday)

Taking a "short" break from heavy meal, we drove to another location for the famous soya bean and bean curd in Ipoh!

Funny Mountain - Ipoh's famous soya bean and bean curd.

(Sorry but somehow, their soya beans look like eggs in the pic to me =.=)

With the relatively huge signage, it's easy to spot from afar but our jaw dropped as we walked closer to Funny Mountain.

Look at the queue!

Geez! Thank goodness there's shades!

Funny Mountain doesn't have any space for you to dine in unless you are willing to eat along the corridor (left pic) with no aircon nor fan. Sibeh hot okay! Right pic illustrates how small the shop is and their bean curd (tau foo fah) is served in a wooden bucket just like the olden days!

Just realized that up till now, I haven't shown any of our faces yet and there you go!

Clockwise from top: The friends, the sisters, the couple.

Everyone was fascinated by the speed of the workers.

Here's my 2 cent for you when you are buying from Funny Mountain - be certain of how packets or bottles you want and don't take you own sweet time to think about it. I've seen the lady getting annoyed by the customers and subsequently raising her voice at them a couple of times. Maybe it's due to the long queue OR the hot weather I don't know, but Ipoh folks seem to be pretty fierce and loud *scared*

In this case, come on, they only sell soya bean and bean curd! Why do you have to take 10 years to decide on the quantity that you want to purchase? Zzzzz.....

A large bottle of soya bean and 2 packets of bean curd to share.

Funny Mountain's famous bean curd.

From the look of it, the bean curd seems very soft and the smell of it was soooo heavenly! I was advised by my friends to try it immediately and express how I felt after eating it.

I took the first spoon and DAMMIT, it's so good, I felt like I was in heaven!!

Allow me illustrate how all of us felt after eating it......

Hmmm.... Like this!

The bean curd is soooo smooth and soft that it melts in your mouth. Unlike those bean curd that we get in KL or PJ, this is one of the best I've had by far! Soya bean was fresh and very fragrant.

Funny Mountain
No 49, Jalan Dato Tahir Azar
30300 Ipoh, Perak.
Tel: 012-588 6167
(10.30am-7.30pm)

I'm definitely going back for more! ;)

Next, it was time for lunch and Mei Gee brought us to a coffee shop nearby (we went by foot) that's pretty famous too but I forgot the name :(

Here, they are famous for the chee cheong fun and hor fun!

They offer 3 types of chee cheong fun for you to choose from and we picked all 3 to share! If my memory doesn't fail me those 3 flavors are chee cheong fun in shrimp paste, curry and I-forgot-the-last-flavor. #memoryfailed

Nice nice nice!!! The chee cheong fun there were pretty good!!

Clockwise from left: Fruit rojak, Ipoh hor fun and caramel custard.

Fruits for the rojak was ordinary as I was expecting more variety of fruits but the thick shrimp sauce makes up to it! The sauce was thick with generous amount of chopped peanuts and cili padi. Yes, it's freaking cili padi my friend. I love the spicy "kick" in this fruit rojak since I'm a big fan of spicy food! :D

Ipoh "kai si hor fun" (kai si here means shredded chicken, not chicken shit wtf) here was pretty good and lived up to my expectation. The hor fun was smooth and the soup was flavorful too! I really liked it but my friends said that although this bowl of hor fun is good, the one at Thean Chun was much, much better!

I vowed to try the famous one at Thean Chun next time!!! *determined*

After a hearty breakfast and lunch, we have quite some time to spare before dinner so we dropped by at Ipoh Parade for a walk and we girls shopped there! With all the latest fashion and variety that we can get in KL and PJ, we actually shopped in Ipoh. I can't believe myself too wtf.

At about 5pm, we make a move to our next destination - Tanjung Tualang for dinner. The journey took us more than hour due to the jam since it's a public holiday anyway. So, why all the way to Tanjung Tualang, you may ask. Well, in case you didn't know, this little town in Perak is famous for its udang galah (the huge freshwater prawns)! It's okay if you don't know because I don't too before the trip hahahaha.

Upon arrival and to finally secured a parking spot, we got down and saw the huge crowd in front of a stall and out of curiosity (sorry, city people are pretty kepo) we walked over to have a look and found out that everyone was buying this thing called "sak ke mah". I have no idea what this snack is called in English but I believe you'd have heard of it if you're a Chinese.

The stall's located at the intersection - facing the market.

The freshly baked "sak ke mah" was quickly sold out before we could purchase but the young men selling it told us that we could book first as their siblings will be sending more of it over in 10-15 minutes. All of us ordered a packet each (sorry, city people are kiasu too) and to my surprise, it was really good and crunchy! This is something that you wouldn't want to miss out when you are there at Tanjung Tualang for seafood ;)

What I noticed about Tanjung Tualang was, there were way too many restaurants around and all famous for the freshwater prawn and fish! According to my friends, there are many mix reviews over the net arguing which restaurants serve the best udang galah but there's 1 thing for sure:

All the restaurants serve tasty and fresh seafood.

Just settle for any of the restaurants and you won't go wrong. And do ask for the price before placing your order!

Being an awesome blogger like I've always been, here are some of the restaurants that other bloggers highly recommend for their fresh+juicy udang galah and I'm compiling the details for your easy reference.

#4 Restoran Thong Lok, Ipoh.

Restoran Makanan Laut Thong Lok
No 9, Market Street,
31800 Tanjong Tualang,
Perak, Malaysia.
Tel No : +605-360 7921

#3 Restoran Luen Fong, Ipoh.

Luen Fong Restaurant
No 19, Jalan Pasar,
31800 Tanjong Tualang,
Perak, Malaysia.
Tel No : +605-360 9276, +6012-533 6166, +6016-590 0038

#2 Restoran Makanan Laut Lung Seng, Ipoh.

Lung Seng Seafood Restaurant
10 Jalan Besar,
Tanjung Tualang,
Perak.
Tel: 05-360 0735
Business hours: 11.30am–9.00pm

#1 Restoran Makanan Laut Yew Kei, Ipoh.

Yew Kei Seafood Restaurant
No 1, Jalan Pasar,
31800, Tanjung Tualang,
Perak, Malaysia.
Telephone : 605-360 6686.
Business hours : 11.30am – 9.00pm.

There you have it - the good and awesome restaurants in Tanjung Tualang!

I even did research over the net on the reviews and Yew Kei Seafood Restaurant is apparently the local's favorite restaurant and if you dine at where the locals do, you won't go wrong. If Yew Kei is packed, go for Lung Seng.

Sadly enough, we tried our luck at all 4 restaurants above but they were either out of seafood or they don't have a table for us. It was only 6+ in the evening!! Traveling to small town during a public holiday is a bitch T_T

(By the way, I saw a poor review on Sun Swee Kiong Seafood Restaurant that their food's below par compared to the rest so you might want to skip this particular restaurant when you are there)

Soon, we decided to give up and head back to PJ for dinner instead but along the way, we saw Restoran Thoh Kee and decided to give this last place a try. Thoh Kee is located quite a distance away from the rest of the restaurants above.

Restoran Thoh Kee, Ipoh.

Wahhhh M.C.A. ok don't play play!

The place was decent and fully occupied but we were lucky enough to get the last table available and decided to settle there for a quick and simple dinner instead. Seeing those huge udang galah in the aquarium, we excitedly asked the lady boss on the price for a kilo but was told that those prawns have been booked people!

Guess we were just fated for not being able to eat them on that day *sob*

All pretend to be camera shy...

We ordered a few of the dishes (recommended by the lady boss) to try and we were really impressed! Though they may seem rather ordinary and simple, probably the same dishes you can find in KL or PJ but trust me, the freshness and taste is different!

The fish was really fresh+tender and other dishes were really tasty! I'm quite picky with food and if I give it a thumb up, you know you can trust me.

To answer your curiosity, the dishes clockwise from top left are steamed fish, beer pork ribs, stir fry intestines, yau mak, wa tan hor, hokkien yee mee, hokkien meehoon and paku pakis.

Sorry if you are not a Chinese because I'm extremely lazy to translate all the dishes name to English.

Sorry to disappoint again because I'm unable to find the details to this humble little restaurant over the net :( Perhaps you can ask the locals for this MCA place and they might be able to direct you!

All in all, I had a great makan trip in Ipoh although I failed to try out all the famous eateries but I'm not disappointed because I know that I'll be paying this little town in Perak a visit again real soon for the sake of good food! That's probably one of the best thing living in Malaysia :)

I hope you like my recommendations above and have a fun makan trip to Ipoh! Please give proper credit for any info abstracted from my blog :]

Isenbin: Authentic Taiwanese Handmade Desserts, ss2

2011-10-09T17:30:00.001+08:00

Yesterday night, Florence and I met up for a drink and after picking her up from her house, she asked, "Are you still craving for Snowflake? What about we try out a newly opened dessert shop in ss2 that sells the same thing as Snowflake? Minus the crazy crowds! "

My answer? "Let's do it!!!"

I love trying out new places with great food recommended by many people. Moreover, Florence managed to convince me that each time she passes by ss2, she saw huge crowd in this newly opened dessert shop and that probably means that they are pretty good.

My reasoning to this is because there are simply too many dessert shops in ss2 (I'm not kidding you). So, if you are facing so many competitors and still managed to draw in the crowd, you must have something that stands out amongst the rest right?

You may ask, what's the difference between Isenbin and the hugely popular Snowflake?

Sincerely, food wise, I would say they are almost the same. Perhaps the vast difference among the 2 is the outlet space. As everyone knows, most Snowflake's outlets are small and have limited space hence it's not easy to get a table that seats big group of friends.

That's not the case for Isenbin. Their ss2 outlet is spacious with plenty of tables and chairs that can seat many people at a go.

They have the similar poster as Snowflake about the history of their dessert!

And a similar menu too! LOL!

Look at their food presentation! Sooooo pretty, no? :D

RM6.50

Florence mixed her ingredients by picking out from the list given where she chose grass jelly with macha oee and red bean. It even comes with pearls and creamer!

Isenbin Signature Grass Jelly, RM6.90.

Being a person who's fickle minded, I cut down the hassle by going for their signature grass jelly (cold) that consists of grass jelly, sweet potato and yam oee.

However, after checking out their Facebook's page, I realised this bowl of sweet treat is supposed to come with macha oee too but mine came without :(

(There's 1 piece of macha oee on the right pic and that was given by Florence for me to try *tears of joy*)

All in all, I would say that I liked the desserts here as I find it to be pretty similar to Snowflake. Their oee and pearls are chewy too! Best part is I don't have to wait for a table nor long for my dessert to be served. It was pretty crowded on a Saturday night but since the space between each tables are further apart so it's really comfortable. The guy who took our orders is pretty attentive and friendly so that's a plus point too ;)

Isenbin, ss2.

I'm planning to bring my family to give this new place a try!

I guess Snowflake has found a competitor now! Given a proper management and service at Isenbin, I'm sure they'll be a threat to Snowflake in no time!! ~~Eh, want to hire me to be your advisor or how to run your outlet? Hahahahaha... Just kidding wtf.~~

Isenbin Authentic Taiwanese Handmade Desserts
5, Jalan ss2/67
47300 Petaling Jaya

Here are a few landmarks for you to locate Isenbin:-
1. A few doors away from ss2's Starbucks.
2. Few doors away from Bread Story.
3. Opposite Wong Kok.
4. The row of shops facing A&W/ Hailam Kopitiam.

If you still can't locate the place with the directions given above, I don't know what else to say!

After dessert, you can even walk across the street for lok lok!!! Everyone shall grow fat together with me :p

Happy nomming!!

My 24th Birthday, 2011

2011-09-16T22:10:00.001+08:00

This entry came more than a month late but it's better to be late than never, right?

I am officially 24! ~~FTS.~~

Seriously, turning 24 can be quite scary feeling because next year I'll be hitting mid-20s and in a blink of eyes I'll be in my late-20s and before I knew it, I'll be hitting 30!!! *horror*

If you are an avid follower of my blog, you'd realise that I did not blog about my 23rd birthday last year because I procrastinated and just when I decided to write it, the excitement wasn't there anymore.

Hence I forced myself to quickly write this otherwise I'll be skipping my 24th birthday entry as well and I can't because my friends put in effort in organising my bday celebrations this year! :D

11th of August falls on a Thursday and since everyone's working, I did not go out for any celebrations with friends. I pushed everything to weekends instead. Still, my family bought me a cake and sang me birthday song at home *embarrassed*

Snickers Cheesecake from 4 Cakes in a Cup.

This year my brother decided to order my birthday cake from his friend instead of getting another Tiramisu from Alexis like the year before. Besides, I got my brother a Tiramisu cake from SuChan (VERY NICE ALSO!!!) a month before mine! So no more Tiramisu!

Brother's friends bought him Butterscotch Choc Chip Cheesecake for his bday and he brought the remaining home. I tried and it's damn good!! I LOVE IT!!!

What I like about 4 Cakes in a Cup is that they use really fresh ingredients for their cakes! The nuts are soooo crunchy and I like the pieces of Snickers in between the cream cheese as a little surprise each time I took a bite :)

However, this little sinful slice isn't a healthy choice for the people who are very health conscious. Don't say I didn't warn you and screwed up your diet! LOL!

I like both Butterscotch and Snickers but if I really have to choose 1, I'd pick the former ;)

Brothers bought my favorite Chatime drinks as well since he knew that I liked it! :D

Ti Guan Yin, Pearl Milk Tea, Taiwan Plum Ice Tea and Grass Jelly Roasted Milk Tea.

I have no freaking idea why my brother bought Ti Guan Yin in the first place -_- It's TI GUAN YIN wtf.

By the way, I don't quite like the taste of Roasted Milk Tea. Taste funny and a little bitter.

On Saturday, it's my lunch date with a bunch of close uni friends!

Mun Keat, birthday girl (damn busy paiseh) and Siok Yim.

This MK spent his entire morning trying to lie to me that he wasn't invited for lunch and I didn't believe him because I caught him lying. He was then forced to change his strategy and said that I'm one of a girl who's really difficult to lie to and that person has to be really smart LMAO.

Shu Yi, Sam, Boon Leng.

(All of us in blue except for Siok Yim! Woah!!)

Lunched at Hokkaido Ichiba, The Gardens and I have a feeling it's related to Rakuzen because their menus are the same!

BUT... food at Hokkaido is a letdown. Not on par with Rakuzen at all hence I'm not going to post photos of our food.

However, there's this 1 thing that you may want to try when you're at Hokkaido...

Fruit Sampler.

I think pretty good and when it comes from a person from ex-F&B industry, you know you won't go wrong wtf.

We spent a few hours chatting and it was then I realized Shu Yi was looking really restless and annoyed after the meal. Turns out, she asked the staff to bring out the surprise birthday cake but they did not and she has to secretly ask them to do it for a couple of times (customer service failed).

I sincerely did not expect a cake because there was only the 6 of us and I didn't see them buying it beforehand. You know what? The 2 SYs (Shu Yi and Siok Yim) came early to buy my birthday cake and present and they already passed it to the staff before meeting up with me! Well planned or what???

Thank you soooo much *touched*

Still pretty much surprised by the cake presented to me!

By the way, do not leave your phone on the table (like what I did) especially when you have a ~~jin kak~~ cheeky friend like MK because he hijacked my phone without me knowing it and wrote "I'm so horny" on my Facebook wall and my life has changed ever since.

I didn't even know until a friend messaged me to ask me why am I horny wtf!!! (And what a stupid question to ask your friend also right?? T_T)

The next cake I want to cut is wedding cake hahahahahaha no no I'M JUST KIDDING. Really.

Orange Chocolate Cake (I think) from Lavender.

Nice! Not too sweet hence you don't feel jelak eating/finishing it. I love the truffles! :D You can find Lavender at The Gardens.

After lunch, the guys left while the ladies went for a round of coffee at Austin Chase (The Gardens) to kill time before our dinner at night.

Forgot what I had but their coffees are pretty decent :)

I read online that Austin Chase's mille crepe and tiramisu are recommended by many so I'm tempted to try them out next time when I pay them a visit!

I'm quite disappointed that when I visited them a couple of times for discussions with their managers and MD, they did not offer us a slice of cake T_T

By night time, it was dinner date with my bunch of close secondary school friends whom I went to Lang Tengah with! They are so sincere in celebrating my birthday with me this year (first time!!!) that they booked me 1 month in advance because they know that I'll be booked by many people.

Knowing that I LOVE Korean food a lot, they decided to celebrate my birthday at Daorae (Sri Hartamas)! I'm sooooo delighted!

Pair #1: Meng and Chryst.

They are not from my secondary school though.

Pair #2: Siew Ling and Kher Li.

Pair #3: Myself and Shin Shin.

I changed from my dress to a casual top and shorts because we'll be grilling meat and seated on the floor so it's important to dress something comfortable!

Pair #4: Mei Gee and Koon Wah

They were so hungry, they don't bother to pose for me *emo*

Love the variety of ban chan served to us!

I'm skipping the photos of food we had that night because, well, this is not a food post but I can assure you that food at Daorae is good and will never disappoint. Or maybe I should do a separate entry for Daorae next time!

The after-meal.

We had pretty late dinner and all of us were famished and we kinda walloped everything in a jiffy!

These 2 never stop fighting one tsk tsk. But I liked this pic! :D

Cheesecake from Australia Cake House (Sea Park, PJ).

Looks humble it's actually pretty good!!! Be sure to try out Australia Cake House at Sea Park (same row as Maybank) because I heard reviews that the cakes there are actually pretty good! ~~I'm planning to try out their durian cake next!~~ I bought 2 slices of the durian cake yesterday night and it's actually pretty good! Recommended to try along with the Original Cheesecake above! ;)

I'm also glad that they bought a small one because each of us got a slice and finished everything on the spot :) We walloped too many ban chan and hardly have any space left for dessert!

Birthday girl got photo bombed by Kher Li.

When it comes to the present giving part, it was really.... special.

Or I should say, I got FOOLED.

T____T

After the cake cutting session, MG casually gave me a bag (from SASA some more) and said, "There! Your birthday presents" with an evil grin. Then, I heard the rest saying, "I want to see her reaction! We should record her reaction!!!"

Turns out, it was a piece of ang ku kuih and a cup of instant Korean noodles =A=

Ang ku kuih was a nickname I received during my trip at Lang Tengah (long story but made me pretty famous there wtf) and since then I've been called ang ku kuih by almost everyone who knows the story. And I really love Korean instant noodles that's why I got the other as present.

With yellow colored ang ku kuih.

There's also a reason why the ang ku kuih must be yellow in color. Because I don't know Chinese so I got called 'banana' and they linked banana to ang ku kuih hahahaha I damn love my friend's creativity.

After the rather awkward moment, I was presented with the real present to which I'll reveal at the end of this entry so you have to continue reading *evil laughter*

They eat cake with...

... chopsticks -_-

Hahaha at least these 2 are normal a bit!

Thereafter we did a really stupid and lame experiment to test out a claim...

Mei Gee vs Koon Wah

Jaclyn vs Koon Wah

Chrystine vs Koon Wah

Kher Li vs Koon Wah

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

This Koon Wah stands more 190cm tall and it's damn true that NONE of us is able to touch him within his arm's length!! I can't believe that even with my height, I can't touch him too *emo*

After dinner, we adjourned to Desa Park City for some wine and beer before calling it a day. I love hanging out at DPC lately for its quiet and relaxing environment, except for the fact that I have to pay RM3.20 for the damn LDP toll!

(Sad that our group photo was taken with MG's DSLR and she still hasn't upload it to her laptop!)

The following day, it's my date with family!

Since I planned for my brother's birthday celebration, it's his turn to do the same for me. My brother reads a few food blogs and lives by the "I live to eat, not eat to live" quote so when he recommends a place for good food, you know you won't go wrong either.

Nihonkan, Jalan Ampang.

This time, he booked a table for 5 of us at Spasso Milano for lunch buffet because not only the food is good, it's really cheap too! Antipasti lunch buffet for RM18++ only!

The place has this classier Papparich outlet that's facing the pool. Love it!

The humble little restaurant with great services.

My brother named this section as 'The Hungry Ghost Corner" in conjunction to the Hungry Ghost month wtf.

This was only my starter+appetizer before my main course! For main course (there's a list given), I had fish while the rest of my family ordered spaghetti. Main course to be charged separately for about RM3.00/plate. In an Italian restaurant. MANA MAU CARI???

Small portions were served on the buffet table to ensure freshness of the food so probably the only downside of this place is that you have to wait for the dish that you want to be on the table again.

Happy family portrait.

Looking for a cheap and good Italian restaurant in town? Here are the details!

Spasso Milano
Nihonkan
347 Jalan Ampang
50450 Kuala Lumpur
Malaysia
03 4252 7088

Please call to make reservation to avoid any disappointment.

By night time, it's another celebration with another group of secondary school mates again! Initially we wanted to try out Erawan, a Thai restaurant at Kota Damansara but they were fully booked for the whole night! That's how famous they are!

Disappointed, we have to settle for the second best - another pretty good Thai restaurant at Chow Yang instead.

No photos of food because it wasn't my first time there.

My very yummy Strawberry Cake from Sun Moulin, One Utama.

If you like a cake that's light, not too rich and sweet that you can't bear yourself to finish the whole slice, this is the right cake for you.

So fluffy and soft!

I love the huge and sweet strawberries on top! ♥

Thank you so much ladies for your time and effort!

Clockwise from top left: Florence, Hui Teng, Wai Mun, myself and Wilson.

Since the night was still young on that Sunday, we went for a drink at Uptown's Papparich!

The white iPhone gang.

(Okay, Wai Mun doesn't have an iPhone. She just posed with it :p)

Xiu Yuan owns a white iPhone too!

And... yes... I'm using both BB and iPhone now... in white! :D

Calvin came to join us too!

This Calvin-san was forced to come back from Japan by his family due to the radiation and now he has to finish his remaining semester here in Malaysia. Or maybe Australia. Not too sure because my memory is "thattttt" great -_-

If you scroll up, you'll realize that Chrystine and Teng wore the SAME dress to celebrate my birthday this year! What a coincidence eh?

As for the presents that I've received, I must say that I really, really love all of it!!!

Starbucks Tumbler and Mints (Florence & Teng), Anna Sui lip gloss (Siok Yim and Shu Yi), Body Shop set and Korean noodle (the gang at Daorae).

I ♥ every single thing!!! I was actually planning to buy Starbucks tumbler myself and was soooo surprised when Florence bought it for me! I think she can read my mind wtf. Love the sweet color for the lipgloss and I'm a big fan of Body Shop's shower set so you can imagine how happy I was upon receiving all the gifts above. Including the noodle of course ;)

Thank you so so so much to all the lovely people who care to spare some time to celebrate my birthday, lunch/dinner treats and presents! Those who celebrated birthday with me but photos not taken, thank you so much to you too! ♥

Still in the mood to celebrate my birthday after a week, I brought my brother out for dinner at Tropicana City Mall.

He is the only joker who didn't treat me but instead, I treated him to dinner some more! Look at the food that we ordered hahahahaha... Crazy or what? Great to dine with guys are willing to help me clear the food on the table because I love a variety of dishes but I can't bear myself to finish them all the time :p

I hope everyone had/will have a great birthday celebration this year because I certainly did! ♥

Happy Malaysia Day! :)

2011-08-10T22:00:00.000+08:00

Just in case you guys forgot how I look like due to lack of update, here's a recent photo of myself to ~~torture~~ refresh your memory!

I just trimmed my hair too! Love it!

I'm not a big fan of soft toys anymore but I must admit that I'm still happy to receive them after such a long, long time! I'll write a random entry summarizing the things I've been busy with lately with whatever photos that I have so make sure you still come back!

DO COME BACK!!!

:D

My First Virgin Charity Run

2011-07-28T00:00:00.001+08:00

Yeap, that's right.

I used to be a very athletic person during the schooling days but that's already the past and now I'm nothing but a white collar worker who has ~~sold my soul to my company~~ no time to exercise.

When I told my friends that I've joined a marathon (organised by my holding company), all they said to me was, "Don't joke lah..." T_T How motivating. Even they are not convinced that I'm able to complete the race with my current stamina.

Since this run was for charity, I decided to just go ahead because for every participants who completed the race, our main sponsor will be donating RM50 to the charity homes. I mean, WHY NOT??

The run was on last Sunday (24/7/11) and I deliberately stayed at home on Saturday night in order to have enough rest and sleep but ended up not sleeping at all because I have to freaking wake up at 4.30am! Meet up at office by 5.30am!! Crazy or not??

While waiting for the rest to arrive, I joined my other 2 Chinese colleagues for breakfast at the dim sum shop. This is what you call "true dim sum breakfast" at 5.30am okay!!! Not 9 or 10am wtf.

Ohya, even the dim sum fella don't believe me that I'm going for for marathon FML.

Nicky, Jacqueline, LY, Jaclyn, Yen.

After registering ourselves (at about 6am), we gathered to do some warm ups together before the run at 7am.

Us with Angie on far left.

I really don't mind staying up late but pleaseeee don't ask me to wake up early T_T

The very outstanding looking lady (second from right) is my MD.

I'm seriously very proud of my MD! She's 71 years old and she completed the marathon way earlier than some people!!! 71 ok!!!

The run was pretty short actually - 5km. I was surprised that I managed to even complete the run without prior preparation instead of being carried away by an ambulance halfway through wtf. A couple of us from FA were among the earliest to finish and we began to fool around, chatting and whacking all the free drinks available (coffee, isotonic & energy drinks).

I was among the earliest to arrive!!! *tears of joy*

Want to know my secret?

Jaclyn's marathon strategies:-
1. While jogging, I kept telling myself "I don't want to be the last... I don't want to be the last..."
2. Ran for my life the moment the road is going downhill. Walk when it's going uphill.
3. When uncles and aunties above the age of 40 overtook me, the kiasu-ness prevails and I anyhow also want to overtake them back to save myself some grace.

The colour of my hair is so outstanding! I love it!!

We started to take heaps of photos when almost everyone was back because there's a photography competition where the best photos will win some cash! WE WANT TO WIN!!!

This guy who's making a funny face is our Area Manager.

He sweated so much, the paper pinned to his chest torn and colour inked on his t-shirt LMAO!!!!

Showing passionate faces after the tiring run.

My face was flushing red that I actually freaked some people out -_-

The team who completed the 5km run for charity!!!

This is about half of the people we have at HQ office and outlet staff are, unfortunately, not allowed to participate.

We tried to do a few jump shots but all of it failed because our timing and coordination sucked BIG TIME! Or maybe the photographer's lousy I don't know :p

Among us, Jay (the guy who stood in front) was the best jumper! He jumped super high as if he's on a trampoline or something! Don't believe me? Check out these photos of him jumping!!

That's a very gay photo of me but I'm sacrificing my image in order to show you guys how high Jay can jump *dedicated blogger* T_T

This was our last event with the company :)

Myself, Yen, LY, Jes, Angie.

I don't remember what I was laughing at but why lah make me laugh when I'm taking photo???? I look ugly when I laugh T_T

So far, I think I was probably the only person in the office who has no problem in walking (my legs didn't ache at all while the rest have problem climbing up and down the stairs LOL!) and when I was being asked why by many people, I guess that's simply because...

I do a lot of (window) shopping.

I have to admit that I may not have to stamina to run/jog but I can actually walk a lot! Shopping helps hahahahaha!

However, after this run, I realised that I have to exercise regularly irregardless of whether I'm free or not. At least once a week for 30mins or something because my stamina's really poor :(

I want to attempt another marathon when I'm ready ;)

Throughout the entry, I avoid mentioning names of the event, company, BODs just in case anyone from the holding tries to google some keywords and link them to my blog omg the horror!

If you are curious, here are the only details that I'm only able to reveal in photo.

Our team :)

Please organise more charity event like this in future! It got us closer and made us realise how poor our stamina is.

My First Bon Odori Experience, 2011

2011-07-20T23:55:00.003+08:00

Today is such a great day and in fact, it's a day to remember!

So many great things happened today and I officially declare today as the best day of the year thus far!

Since I'm in such great mood, I shall blog!

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

It was actually a pretty last minute plan to attend Bon Odori and we were unable to buy any cheap or reasonable yukata although Florence and I really wanted to wear it to the event.

We checked out online blogshops and a yukata costs about RM180-RM200+! Call me a cheapo but sorry, I'm quite reluctant to pay this amount for a costume that I'll be wearing once a year only -_-

And so, I decided to at least attempt to look like a Japanese girl! Of course, I failed.

However, I must admit that I had a good hair day!

My curls were beautiful on that day and the aunty who sells bubble tea at Kelana lrt station asked me where I got my hair permed at, how did I styled it and she loves the colour too. She's obsessed with my hair!

She even asked where I bought my flower from and I reluctantly told her that the flower was bought from pasar malam (night market), so no low class already suddenly T_T

Again, I got many strangers asking about my hair once awhile and it puzzles me because I don't know how to answer them! There are no beauty tips to share! I simply wax my hair when it's semi-dry and blow dry thereafter!

I think what differs my curls to others is the fact that my hair is pretty thick.

The 2 important people in my circle of friends, Florence (left) and Teng.

We have been friends since primary school! We fought, we cried, we laughed and did almost every possibly things we could do throughout our journey of growing up together.

We even went to Taiwan together late last year :)

After reading a few blog entries of people's past experience at Bon Odori, we were advised to take public transport over as finding a car park proves to be a problem. And so we did.

Teng needs Enfagrow :p

I've never been a fan of public transportation in Malaysia but I thought we could risk it this time around. The only public transport that I'm willing to take in Malaysia is only Putra LRT and KL Monorail.

HUGE MISTAKE!!!

KTM delayed for 30mins. Place getting crowded and the women-only coach has MEN queuing as well (but we women shoo-ed them away). By the time the train arrived, stampede almost happened wtf.

Teng is, well, a bad photographer as usual :p

We got squeezed like sardine in the coach (thank goodness all women!) and with my height, I'm smelling the top of people's hair. Worse for Teng and Florence because with their height, they smell people's armpits HAHAHAHAHAHA....

As all of us stood so close to each other, we (a Caucasian lady, Malays, Indians & Chinese) ended up chatting and each time 1 of the us got down, we said goodbye LOL! A very 1Malaysia experience!

In the end, we arrived pretty late at about 9+ and I was amazed by the amount of crowds there. People were seen donning in yukata irregardless of their races and happily taking pictures with their friends or any photographers who approached them. A very interesting sight!

Why are you selling Justin Bieber's merchandises here at a Japanese event?

There were many stalls selling various kinds of Japanese food, drinks and desserts. Prices were rather expensive but you kinda expected it at such event, no?

My dressing on that day.

Florence and Teng's dressing.

On nom nom nom...

Upon arrival, we were so hungry, we headed straight to the stalls to hunt for food!

Sharing a bowl of oden. ♥ this picha!

I love Takoyaki!!! ♥♥♥

These were our yummy dinner! ♥

Surprisingly, Pocari Sweat were sold much cheaper than retail price (2 for RM3 only!) and both Florence and I who love Pocari Sweat, bought it immediately!

However, we were disappointed that the "supposingly" Yaki Soba turned out to be the Chinese yellow noodles (egg noodles). Why con people???? :(

By the time we settled down for dinner, the dance started. And we missed it :(( But it's also a great view and entertainment for us to enjoy our dinner while watching the dance at the same time :)

Teng quenching her thirst with Pocari Sweat.

Florence who got photobombed by a lady in yukata.

Itadakimasu~♥

People dancing around the stage.

Performers were all primary school kids!

Out of thousands of people on that day, we managed to bump into Wei Mun whom we have not met since we left high school! If this is not fate, I don't know what it is! :)

We walked around a little longer before we left the place at about 10+ because we were rushing back to PJ for our yamcha LOL!

KTM station were packed to the brim with human and Teng volunteered to pay for the cab because she didn't pay a single cent for the food that night and thanks to her, we managed to escape from having to squeeze ourselves into the train again :p

Thereafter, we adjourned to Kota Damansara for yamcha to catch up with each other's life and Teng stayed overnight at my place since it has been late and it's unsafe for her to drive all the way back to Puchong.

Overall, I would say that it's a very interesting experience at this Bon Odori festival. All you get to do is to takes tonnes of pictures (in our case, we didn't take much since we weren't in yukata), dance and eat. I may or may not visit again next year unless I manage to get someone to drive us over or having my girl friends to wear yukata together with me in a group ;)

I love seeing babies in kids in costumes and they looked absolutely adorable! :D Those who has never been to Bon Odori before, please go and experience it once.

2011-07-17T22:38:00.001+08:00

For the first time in my life, I went to Bon Odori!

Attempting to look like a Japanese girl but failed wtf.

I have a few good restaurants to recommend but I'm so lazy to blog :( However, my next entry is going to be Bon Odori first because I just went there yesterday so it's still fresh and the excitement is still here in me :)

Do come back to check it out ;)

Happy 25th Birthday to my elder brother!

~~Your birthday never fails to cost me a bomb!~~

Road Trip: Paddy Fields at Sekinchan

2011-06-26T18:10:00.002+08:00

This road trip came about last minute on the day before Wesak Day (last month) when Mun Keat and I were BBM-ing each other that we shouldn't be wasting our precious day off and we should do something instead.

It was then MK suggested Sekinchan for photography. I delegated him as the organizer where he's supposed to 1) research on the places to eat and go to 2) how to get there and 3) invite friends.

I secretly backed him up by asking Eunice to help with the internet research on the first point while I asked my dad for help on the second point. Not that I don't trust MK with his leadership skill but I'm a person who's used to having a back up plan.

GUESS WHAT!!! MK didn't managed to google anything from the internet about Sekinchan, didn't google map the location over as well as his friends all ffk-ed!!! Thank goodness I have back ups and both my friends didn't ffk me! Now, I guess I'm better at leadership and planning instead hahahahaha!!! :p

We departed from my house and the journey took us about 2 hours to reach our destination at the speed of 120-140km/h with many traffic lights at Kampar town. There are 2 famous restaurants at Sekinchan and we decided to settle for Jiann Chyi Restaurant. I was pleasantly surprise to find out that Jiann Chyi was once featured in Taste with Jason (Ah Xian from Astro AEC) programme.

Jaclyn with Eunice and Mun Keat.

With Jeremy.

Dude, thanks for coming despite busy preparing for your CFA examination :)

One of my friends favourite past time is to catch me playing with handphone T_T

If you ask the locals around or people who frequent to Sekinchan, they'll tell you that this little town is famous for eating one type of meat which is....... shark meat.

Yes, shark *gulp*

I was a little hesitant at first because I oppose to the idea of eating shark fin kinda person and now I have to eat shark meat. However, I also learned that they serve nothing much there other than shark meat FML.

(Sharks served here are bred apparently. Not endangered shark)

Clockwise from top left: Shark meat porridge, stir fry shark meat, vegetable and deep fried shark meat.

The shark meat porridge is our favourite and really tasty as you can taste the freshness of the shark meat as well as the sweetness of the soup. Stir fry shark meat is equally good too with the meat being cooked tender and juicy. Stir fry vegetable may seem very ordinary from the picture but it was cooked with generous amount of dried shrimps and garlic that make such simple dish so delicious! Finally, deep fried shark meat is quite a let down. I guess fresh ingredient shouldn't be fried as it was a little tough and nothing special about it other than dipping it with chilly sauce.

Our meal with drinks came to about RM48 for the 4 of us. So cheap!!! Shark meat leh!

Jiann Chyi Restaurant
No 156, Jalan Bagan Sekinchan
Sekinchan 45400
Tel: 03-3241 4690

(The other popular restaurant called Guan Seng Long is located right opposite of Jiann Chyi)

Mun Keat was fascinated by the signage behind me and since I was dressed in red, he asked me to pose for him.

Sekinchan's firefighters.

Seriously, if we are, I think Sekinchan will be in deep trouble...

My huge Maxis umbrella is able to shelter 4 of us if we squeeze together! Awesome max!

Clueless on where to get about after a hearty meal, we asked the locals on what we can do and places for photography. Hey, at least I make use of the limited Mandarin that I know of okay! *proud*

We drove around the little town and we came across....

"Moo~ these bunch of morons... Moo~"

A skinny cow....

Eyesore sight of the sea....

People drying shrimps and fishes the traditional way...

Damn smelly okay I'm not even kidding you. This MK unwind the window to take picture and we almost died by the pungent smell.

Cruising around the town in my baby Latte, we finally found the place that we were looking for and it took our breathe away the moment we drove in to the paddy fields.

Paddy fields, Sekinchan.

The place's so big and the sight is so pretty, we just couldn't wait to get out of the car to snap photos already!

Photo will be perfect if we have a tractor behind LOL!

2 city girls conquering a little town.

With my 2 handsome hunks aka bodyguards :p

The rice that you eat.

Was asked to squat > Took our umbrella away > Asked to turn and smile.

When we are not shooting, this is what we did - hiding under the umbrella! I did not apply any sunblock and it's SO sunny that day! Very, very hot!! I even got sunburned at the end of the day T_T

Through the eyes of others...

We then found this rather huge and beautiful temple in the middle of the paddy fields and decided to make a pit stop over to explore.

Breathtaking view from the top of the pagoda. Please be aware that the staircase is extremely steep and narrow. I suggest only youngsters go up instead.

Thank goodness I didn't break his leg hahahaha....

FML.

Angry Birds HAHAHAHAHA

They intended to pose like Angry Birds but 1 of our friend commented in Facebook that it looked like they are using a public toilet LOL!!!

The organizers :)

With such beautiful scenery and scorching sun, all photos turned out so well.

We are happy like kids!

Next, we changed location for more photo shooting.

So picturesque!

Absolutely heart this pic!

We decided to do manyyyyyyy jump poses to show how happy and energetic we youngsters are wtf. I mean, such sunny day with the colourful bright coloured t-shirt that we wore on that day, we can't have emo pose, right?

Might as well show everyone who we truly are - fun and happy bunch of people!

I think I looked super happy in this photo kekeke....

You have no idea how times we've jumped in order to have everyone looked synchronized in jumping like the photos above.

However, this is my FAVOURITE jump photo taken on that day....

Hahahaha both of them are so funny and cute!

Both of them jumped so high, they looked like they are flying wtf.

Cool pose.

Y-M-C-A.

Group jump shot with timer failed.

Posers' butt pose.

On the way out, we came cross this row of tractors parked along the road and decided to stop by again for photo shoot.

WAH!

I have no idea Eunice gave me a "V" sign behind!

Thank you for not ffk-ing me like MK's friends :p

Thank you for tolerating my nonsense! Lol.

(These 2 guys aren't that tall after all!!!)

The colour of our shirt matches the colour of the tractors! Look like t-shirt models or not???

Wahahahaha ugly photo of Jeremy and myself but soooo funny!

Thereafter we thought of going to a place with waterfall since the day was so sunny and we drove an hour plus to Rawang's Templer's Park for waterfall.

But it was such a letdown!!! :(((((

That's not even a waterfall!!! ROAR!!!

The water is so filthy but there are people swimming in it and washes their hair too wtf. I can't imagine soaking my legs in it and what's more, swimming in the filthy water *shudder*

Finally, after spending about 30minutes at the Templer's Park (10 minutes climbing the hill), we adjourned to Kepong KTZ for high tea and we were joined by Boon Kee who can't make it on that day with us as she has to meet up with her insurance agent on the same day.

Mango sai mai lou is still the BEST.

Overall, we had a wonderful day filled with laughter and a couple of impromptu plans that we came up with on that day itself.

My personal tip: For photo shooting, go with people who are fun and willing to pose for/with you. You don't want all your photos taken look the same with the same poses, no?

Give this paddy fields at Sekinchan a shot if you are into photography like us! I don't mind being your model but lunch on you! :p

2011-06-25T23:05:00.000+08:00

I'm terribly sorry for not posting up the Sekinchan entry yet as promised because I just went to another fabulous island for vacation!!!

Check out how beautiful this place is!

Lang Tengah island.

I'm missing the beach and island already! :(((

Wait till I grab hold of all the photos from my friends, I'll blog about it immediately and show you guys how beautiful the island is :)

At the meantime, I'm starting on the Sekinchan entry already! Come back to check out how the place looks like! I also realised Malaysia do have a couple of places that are perfect for photography! Not bad! ;)

2011-06-12T23:55:00.000+08:00

Here's a little preview to what my next entry is going to be! :)))))

It's going to be one of my favourite entry for this year with lots of beautifully taken photos of a place that you can't get in KL or PJ!!!

Start guessing where I went to last month and make sure you come back soon to check out this beautiful place in Selangor! ;)

Stay tuned!

Shu Yi's 23rd Birthday @ My Elephant, Hartamas

2011-06-04T18:05:00.003+08:00

I don't think Shu Yi will mind the fact that I just revealed her age hahaha!

We are both of the same age now! YES!! I bet nobody else is as excited as I do. You have no idea how much "age" meant to you when 50% of your friends are a year younger wtf.

Just kidding! I'm fine with it because I think I age gracefully hahaha. Right? Right??

Shu Yi's birthday was celebrated at My Elephant (Sri Hartamas branch) because her best friend, Siok Yim, would like to try that place out and Hartamas is kind of like a mid-point for everyone from PJ, Cheras, Kepong and Sg Buloh.

I called a couple of days in advance to book a table as well as their famous Mango Cheesecake in order to avoid any casualties.

Being a person who's usually on time, I was surprised that I arrived sharp at 7pm LOL! Didn't notice that until the waitress asked for my name, the time that I booked and said, "Oh! Sharp at 7pm!"

I'm used to being punctual because I have meetings often and I avoid being late :)

Siok Yim and Jee Meei.

Siok Yim was so pressured by this habit of mine, she arrived very early too. Ah, not to forget that I likeeeee to tease her a lot whenever she's late! Now she has phobia of being late when she's going out with me =A=

Boon Kee dear & myself.

After Siok Yim, Jee Meei and Boon Kee came together thereafter.

Followed by Boon Leng.

This is the prank that we were planning to play on the birthday girl! :D

Siok Yim, Jee Meei and Boon Leng.

Sam came even later than the birthday girl! How dare of him!

I hadn't seen Sam since I left Australia so you can guess how many years it has been! Can't help it because he's always so busy!!

Shu Yi, the birthday girl and Angie.

My first time seeing Shu Yi dressed up so feminine that day! We should totally make it a point that the birthday boy/girl MUST dress up nicely on their birthday celebration! Who's with me??? :D

Black and white. We complement each other well :p

I looked damn ugly in the photo above but Shu Yi looked nice so no choice, I just post it up T_T

Food at My Elephant is pretty decent albeit the small portion so everyone was busy eating and don't bother to pose for my camera *sob*

Sam: Boon Boon... how come your tomyam looks so good geh...

Boon Leng: Hehehe you also know leh....

Okay, I just made both of them sound so gay...

Damn hate Siok Yim okay. Most people look ugly with candid but hers always turn out so nicely. WHY SO UNFAIR??? T_T

The birthday girl served us that night. What an honor!

The 3 best friends.

Mango Cheesecake.

(Check out my review on My Elephant's cakes here)

It was really awkward when the friendly waitress brought out the cake because she presented the cake to ME!!! Shu Yi (who was seated beside me) was ready to accept the cake but the waitress brought the cake passed her and put it in front of me hahahahahhahaha how embarrassing!!

Shu Yi has no idea about the prank and was having a harddddddd time trying to put off the candles!

All of us had a great time laughing...

You what I mean by ugly candid? FML.

And continue laughing...

She's still having a hard time at it LMAO!

We were all happy with our slice of cake ^^

I'll save the food review at My Elephant for the next entry because this entry is all about Shu Yi's birthday :)

Thereafter, we adjourned to Brussels at Solaris for a drink and for some catch ups.

My fringe was too long and the damn portable air conditioner kept messing up my hair T_T

It has been quite some time since we last met up with each other so we had a great time that night. Sam's a joker so it's fun to have him around (minus the fact that he said I was very fat back in Foundation and how much I've changed now).

Each of us with our drinks.

Boon Leng, being a very generous person like usual, treated us that night! Paiseh max because for no reason he's treating us! You must let us treat u back next time, okay??? Thank you so so so much! :)

Happy Birthday to you, Shu Yi! Cheersssss~

Although it was a simple celebration with the same faces again and nothing like what you had back in Australia but I truly hope you had a great time with us ;)

*************

Sorry for not updating my blog for more than a week. I have been extremely busy with work lately as well as hanging out with my friends. Life's more than staying behind the computer, right? I'm now chilling out with my dear friend at Starbucks (Mont Kiara) with our laptop and a cup of Green Tea Soy Frappuccino so I thought of quickly completing this halfway written entry (dated back on 23rd May!) before going to Curve for friend's birthday dinner and yamcha. Life's good :)

Have a wonderful weekend!

Hua Xing Restaurant, Sungei Way

2011-05-22T01:54:00.001+08:00

Blessed to all PJ-rians because I'm recommending another good restaurant in PJ again!

Ever wonder where you could find a place that serves good and authentic Hokkien food and doesn't cost you a bomb or burn a hole in your pocket? If you have thought about that before, great. Read on.

Hua Xing Restaurant was a place recommended by my brother's friends (who are quite picky with food) and they gave 2 thumbs up for the quality of food served. My first visit with my family was on the 7th day of CNY and we went there again just 2 weeks ago on my dad's birthday because I said I was treating.

I'm supposed to blog about this during CNY but yea, I forgot :p Hey, it's better to be late than never right?? I'm going to join both visits into 1 entry in order to save time ;)

Everyone probably already knows that Sungei Way isn't exactly a very safe place to hang out and what's more, the location of Hua Xing is pretty secluded -_- Located on the first floor at the building beside the wet market, it's not easy to spot if you are not familiar with the place around.

Map to Hua Xing Restaurant.

Well, that's probably the simplest map you've ever seen but I'm drawing it without a mouse so that's the most I can draw for you guys. If I'm not mistaken, that's Sg Way secondary school. But look for the market landmark! There's only 1 market in Sg Way!

Personal tips from me to you - Do not walk to the alley behind by yourself (be it you are a guy or girl) and avoid parking at the basement car park. The place is totally unsafe so we always park by the roadside and walk together in a group.

The moment you walk to the shop lots behind, you'll see many shops selling sarees and Indian stuff. You can even smell strong jasmine flower scent. That place is like a Little India! Hua Xing is located upstairs at first floor :)

Hua Xing is the only Chinese restaurant there and the place is almost packed with people on CNY and weekday when I went over. I heard you'll have to wait for a table on weekends!

Appearing in numerous newspapers reviews and visited by many local celebrities just confirm 1 thing - THIS PLACE MUST BE PRETTY GOOD!

More pictures of celebrities and reviews on the other side of the wall.

Hua Xing Menu, Page 1.

Hua Xing Menu, Page 2.

Sadly, prices are not stated in the menu so all the dishes that I'm about to recommend, do not have price to it because I have no idea too! But rest assured, it is definitely reasonable ;)

Marmite Pork Ribs.

Marmite pork ribs is a a very common Chinese dish that you can find in almost all Chinese restaurant but because we wanted to order a dish of pork so we picked that.

The pork ribs was fried till crunchy and flavourful! Not bad and I liked it!

Home Town Tauhu.

For a person who likes tauhu, I LOVE this type of tauhu being cooked! You know, being fried and topped with minced pork? Absolutely love it. Yum!!!

Other bloggers recommended their Fish Paste Beancurd. Imma try that on my next visit!!

Kangkung Belacan.

Just like what you can get in any other Chinese restaurant. Nothing to rave about.

Thai Style Lady Fingers (Okra).

Recommended by the uncle who takes order as he said it's pretty good and popular among the diners and we decided to give it a shot.

The dish is, indeed, good! It's appetizing with the sweet Thai sauce topped with cucumber, onion and chilly slices. Lady's fingers were crunchy and go very well with the sauce. You might want to try this when you're there ;)

Spring Roll (Chun Kin).

This was also recommended by the uncle during our second visit. By the look of it, it seems like fried banana fritters but don't judge a book by its cover! This spring roll is pretty good! Perhaps the skin could be a little thinner.

And here comes our FAVOURITE dishes at Hua Xing! It's a MUST ORDER when you are there!

Fried Crispy Brinjal.

I have no idea why this dish is not listed in the menu but pleaseeeeeee remember to order this in LARGE when you are there because I'm sure you won't regret this! Even this "large" seems very small and little to us!

Just tell them fried brinjals and they know what you want. The brinjals were fried with generous amount of garlic bits and topped with a bit of spring onions, this dish is addictive! It's my favourite dish!!!

Fried Tapioca Flour Noodles.

One of the authentic Hokkien dish that looks strikingly similar to loh see fun (rice noodles) but this is tapioca flour. Texture is more chewy and a little bit harder than loh see fun but soooo damn tasty!!!

I love the chewy texture :D

Hokkien Braised Pork with Alkaline Kuih.

Braised Pork.

I have no idea why it's called alkaline kuih but basically you dip this into the dark braised pork gravy to eat and it's so delectable, you couldn't stop eating it! The pork were soft and braised till flavourful with the awesome sauce. You cannot give this a pass if you are here or wanting to try Hokkien food.

Hua Xing just became one of my family's favourite restaurant (especially my mum who is a Hokkien!) due to the quality of food served and of course, price being really reasonable too! However, we still avoid going to this place over the weekend because we definitely don't want to waste time looking for a parking spot as well as a table to seat us when we are hungry.

If you are interested in giving this place a shot over the weekend, be sure to reserve a table by giving them a call! Don't make your daddy and mummy wait!

Restoran Hua Xing
No. 1-12, 1st Floor
Plaza Seri Setia
Jalan SS9/2
Seri Setia, Sungai Way
Petaling Jaya
Tel: 016-376 7477/03-78763288

Good luck in searching for the place with my awesome map! Of course, the easier way is to bring me along and I'm more than happy to be your navigator - provided the meal's on you :p

Myung Pum Korean Chicken BBQ, Sri Hartamas

2011-05-15T02:05:00.002+08:00

How did you guys celebrate Mother's Day with your beautiful mummy?

Besides buying spa vouchers for my both my parents, we brought her to dine at Myung Pum Korean Chicken BBQ restaurant at Sri Hartamas. It was the first time for all of us.

Myung Pum Korean Chicken BBQ (halal).

Located close to Finnegan's Irish Pub (one of the popular landmark in Hartamas), Myung Pum is a corner lot with ample space hence they have both indoor and outdoor seating.

Weather has been extremely hot lately so my family strongly opposed to the idea of being seated outdoor so we chose indoor instead. And I don't think it's a very good idea either.

It's a freaking BBQ restaurant and if a barbecue restaurant doesn't have proper ventilation or aircon isn't cold enough, everyone ended up smelling like a human bbq with sauce (sweat) wtf. Myung Pum clearly lacks of both :(

Little bro, beautiful Wong mama and myself.

Look at my wet fringe! That's how much I sweated when I just got into the shop! I'm a person who's really cannot stand heat T_T

Like father, like son.

Both of them always give the same smile and pose. Unconsciously! Awesome or what?? LOL!

Unlike other Korean bbq restaurant that I've been to, they have this HUGE barbecue hot plate in the middle of the table.

Only 2 ban chans were served. How miserable T_T And I dislike both although my family likes it.

I absolutely love Korean food so I have higher expectation and taste bud whenever I visit to a Korean restaurant. I'm not going to be lenient with my opinions on the Korean food. NO.

Korean Chicken BBQ (Dak-Galbi). RM22/pax.

Comes in either Original or Spicy. Brother ordered for 2 pax so he chose both 'Original' and 'Spicy'. Since everything got mixed together, I have no idea how 'Original' tastes like.

Very polite, attentive and friendly staff.

We were initially being served by the extremely friendly and pretty ladyboss before she left to attend the cash register and her staff came to serve us. One of the reason why I love dining at a Korean restaurant is because the staff are well trained to be polite and friendly just like the Korean culture ^^

"Dak-Galbi, marinated with Korean secret red pepper sauce and cooked right on the table with mountain of veggies, sweet potato, boneless chicken and Korean rice cake." (as quoted from their name card)

Although the taste isn't as strong as marinated kimchi (slightly milder), but I still like it. Especially the veggies and chicken that stick at the bottom of the hot plate taste much, much better hahahaha!

It's might be a little spicy for those who can't take spicy food though. But just nice for my liking considering that I loveeee spicy food! :)

Andong Steamed Chicken. RM49 (small), RM70 (large).

Marinated chicken with hearty veggies & luxurious Korean glass noodles! First and only ONE place in Malaysia serving this exclusive dish! Must try! (quoted from their name card again)

Andong steamed chicken is one of their signature dish, along with Dak-Galbi. This was my favourite dish that night! I can't help but to keep eating the glass noodles as it goes very well with the sauce :p The dish may taste similar to Chinese dishes but I don't care!!! It's tasty!!

Korean Style Pan Cake. RM20.

To be honest. I don't like it because I dislike spring onions and the whole pan cake is being "decorated" with it wtf. If you are okay with spring onions, you'll like this dish like my family does because they even whacked my share -_-

I tried and find nothing special about it. It tastes similar to fried egg with onions and chillies that I cook at home.

Korean Style Chicken Soup (Sam Ge Tang). RM24.

With chicken, rice and etc.

Sam Ge Tang is simply too.... bland. It's great that they didn't add in any salt so it's really healthy but a bit too bland for my brothers liking. Hardly any taste of the ginseng.

Since my mum and I are both soup maniac, both of us finished it all. We are okay with the taste but yes, this is not the best Sam Ge Tang that I've had.

My verdict:-

There aren't many choices/selections for you to choose from their menu. Food was okay (average) and price is reasonable. Place is a little stuffy and hot. Service is extremelyyyyy good!

Similarly, if you want to dine at a good Korean restaurant, you may want to give Little Korea at Solaris a try. Or maybe Daorae (they have a few branches, pls google yourself!) that's not too far away from Myung Pum.

For Muslims readers who are looking for a Halal Korean BBQ restaurant around, Myung Pum is the place to be as they don't serve pork and they use Halal chicken only! ;) I saw many Muslim families dining there that night!

Myung Pum Korean Chicken BBQ Restaurant
No 2, Ground Floor
24/70A, Desa Sri Hartamas
50480 Kuala Lumpur
Tel: 03-2300 3203

I have my favourite Korean restaurant that serves cheap and GOOD food in PJ but I don't want to share leh! Now that place is getting crowded and I always have to wait for a table whenever I'm there :(((

My colleagues once recommended this Korean restaurant in ss2 to me saying that it's worth a try. Maybe I shall give it a shot and share with you guys next time! ;)

Guess What I Won?

2011-05-14T02:35:00.002+08:00

I have been extremely busy lately with projects and last Wednesday, I'm finally done with my company's staff party! It was a lottttttt of work but I had great fun nonetheless!

Will blog about it when I have all the photos from my colleagues and professional photographer.

Meanwhile, take a wild guess on what I've won in the lucky draw?

I won myself a hair dryer -_-
(I was actually aiming for the laptop & camera T_T)

It's embarrassing because it wasn't something to shout about and I still blog about it but I AM REALLY HAPPY THAT I WON A HAIR DRYER!!! :D

I've been planning to buy a new and good hair dryer for my hair since I wash and blow dry it everyday but all good hair dryers in the market are really, really expensive! Now, I saved a lot of money since I won it!

And this Philips hair dryer is really good too! Got a few temperatures for you to control as well as hot and cool air!! 1,600W! Mad love it!

So, if you think my hair is pretty when you see me, you know what I use LOL~!

Left or Right?

2011-05-08T23:59:00.002+08:00

Yesterday was a great day! Siok Yim, Castine, Boon Kee, Eunice and I celebrated Boon Leng's birthday at New York New York, One Utama.

By the way, food at New York New York is pretty good. You guys should check that place out when you are there ;)

Boon Leng, we are both officially of the same age!!! Although it might only last for a few months but I feel that somehow, I finally fit into you people's world wtf. Why this group of friends are all younger than me?? T_T

At night, my brother and I treated my family to a Korean restaurant at Sri Hartamas and I shall save the review of that place for another entry. After dinner, I adjourned to Bangsar South with Eunice to meet up with Li Lee and Meng Fai whom we've not met for a long, looooooong time! Great catch ups with them and these 2 didn't change 1 bit. Still so cute and funny :)

I absolutely love my Saturday!!!

Happy 23rd Birthday to you, Boon Leng :)

*************

It's Sunday and I'm up at 9am for a dance practice for our upcoming staff party. Freaking 9am on a Sunday!

Every weekend I was hoping to wake up at noon but I always don't get to *sob*

Moreover, I was busy watching videos of Super Junior's "Sorry Sorry" to learn the dance steps at 2+ am just for today's dance practice!!! Am I committed or what? LOL!

Speaking of the staff party, I'm now considering changing my dressing to something else (will still wear boots and cowboy hat) but I just couldn't decide which top I should choose! Yea, I'm fickle minded like that and I hate it.

I'm also considering changing my bangs back to side fringe but I also cannot decide whether to go with left or right parting hahahahaha

Left vs right parting.

My parting has always been left but my good friend said that I look better with right and she wants me to change it. Actually... I don't think there's any difference between both but since hairstyle is important as it affects a person's look so I want it to be at tip top condition wtf.

Please don't look into my eyes in the photos above because I was having eye infection at that time and although both eyes were recovering when the photos above were taken, the redness is still visible so people with sensitive eyes better not look.

It's 11.59pm! I shall watch an episode of Yes Sir! Sorry Sir! before going to bed. Dance practice tomorrow after work omg. I need Redbull already....

Happy Mother's Day to all beautiful mums out there!!!

Cakes from My Elephant (Sec 17 & Sri Hartamas)

2011-05-05T00:25:00.003+08:00

Follow up to this entry earlier on Maggie's birthday and I said I'll write a separate entry for the cakes bought that night. So here it is. A short one :)

A couple of months back, the same group of friends and I went to try out this so-called "one of the best Thai restaurant in PJ" at Section 17. The name is My Elephant.

The food is pretty good (recommended to try but a little pricey because the portion is small) and as much as I'd like to give the place a review, unfortunately, I did not take any photos of the food due to the poor lighting. If you are going to give My Elephant a try after reading my blog, please read this carefully...

You must try their Mango Cheesecake!

Don't freaking leave the place if you did not try it! Apparently they don't sell Mango Cheesecake everyday so it really depends on your LUCK! ~~Cry and beg them for it wtf.~~ So delectable and awesome that I personally went back to that place a couple days later to buy a few slices for my family to savour.

My friends love the Mango Cheesecake from there so much so that they decided to order it from My Elephant again in conjunction with Maggie's birthday. It's killing 2 birds with 1 stone :D

This time around, we are a little adventurous and bought other flavours to try out!

Cakes from My Elephant (numbered for easy reading).

1. Mango Cheesecake. The bomb! Mango's sweet and it complements the cheese base so well. The mango is frozen so the texture is maintained and doesn't melt so quickly. I absolutely LOVE the way they placed the mango slices like a flower :)

2. Peach Cheesecake. Peach is sweet but trust me, once you've tried Mango Cheesecake, this will be too plain/ordinary for your liking.

3. Chocolate Cheesecake. Funnily, it tastes like Milo. It's creamy and thick and it really tastes like Milo I kid you not! And too sweet for me :(

4. Blueberry Cheesecake. This was my second favourite after Mango Cheesecake. I think it was quite nice except for the fact that it melted a little on that day so it was a bit too soft to eat. But it's okay anyway.

My verdict?

Just stick to My Elephant's Mango Cheesecake.

Look how pretty the cake looks!

Oh! Just to let you know, if you dine in at My Elephant, the frozen mango is laid flat instead of standing prettily like the photo above. So don't complain to them saying that the cakes bought by Jaclyn looks pretty and yours is ugly okay!

I would totally recommend you guys to buy 1 whole of this Mango Cheesecake if you are planning to celebrate a friend's birthday with less than 10 pax. Not only the cake looks pretty and yummy, it's reasonably priced too. I forgot the exact price but it's around RM70++.

When the waiters at Maria's Cafe took out the cakes for us, they even asked us where we bought the cakes from and the number to call because the cakes are pretty! I think their boss is interested to try?

(Seriously, I think My Elephant should give my friends and I discounts for promoting their cakes on that day as well as in my blog LOL!)

If you are interested in giving this a try after reading my review above, book the cakes in advance by giving them a call.

My Elephant
Block C-G4 Happy Mansion
Section 17/13
46400 Petaling Jaya
Selangor
Tel: 010-220 1283/ 012-328 5028 (Patrick)

Business Hours: Tuesday to Sunday (except Sunday lunch)
12pm - 2.30pm; 6pm to 10pm.

They have a branch at Sri Hartamas too! That's where we collected 5 of our cakes from! Google the rest of the info yourself!

Shopping for Cowgirl Costumes & New Hairband

2011-05-02T01:15:00.003+08:00

Company's staff party is coming up and the theme for this year will be Wild Wild West! Yeehaaa~!

I seriously hate themes that require me to fork out money to buy costumes. Especially those that I can only wear it once and that's it. I don't mind spending money on clothes that I can wear on normal outings but come on, it's Wild Wild West people! I don't want to go out to One Utama as a Cowgirl or Red Indian wtf.

And so, I decided to go as a Cowgirl because all I need to buy is a pair of boots and a hat. I'm going to pair those with a t-shirt, mini skirt and a leather jacket. I'M THAT CHEAPSKATE! NO MONEY OK MY PARENTS DON'T PRINT MONEY!

Florence is being so kind to accompany me to Sungei Wang and Times Square to shop for my stuff (we didn't managed to find Red Indian costumes though) and these are my shopping loots bought yesterday.

Shopping loots.

Although I didn't buy much but I still spent more than RM200 on shopping and meals T_T That's also after stopping myself from entering many shops, putting back the clothes that I find pretty and keep telling self that I need to stay focused with my mission of the day.

Otherwise, I think I might easily spend RM300-RM500 like usual -_-

Cheapest Cowboy hat that I managed to find! RM20 only!

Knee high boots that can fit into my fat legs. RM89.90.

Dress with necklace - RM26.90. Belt - RM12.90.

Hairband, RM6.00 (I think).

I was trying on the variety of hairbands at a particular stall and Florence thought I looked good in any hairbands especially those with big flowers on it. She kept persuading me to buy those that I've tried but I didn't want to because I thought it's too girlish for my style and I sincerely don't think I look good in it. I didn't want to waste money too wtf.

While I was trying on the hairband above, she thought this looked best on me and went to pay without me knowing it =.=''' So, this is a gift from Florence and I wore it around KL with me today hahahaha.

Surprisingly, I began to like it :)

This is how I looked like in hairband for you guys to see! Please be mentally prepared. Not suitable for minor by the way.

Check out my necklace from Taiwan! :D

Florence, these are specially taken for you to express how much I love this hairband that you got for me *muaks*

I didn't know that I can actually pull off feminine look like this hahahaha! How deceiving because I'm definitely not feminine in real life :p

As you can see, my bangs is a little too long so I swept it to the side. Quite refreshing for a change, no? I want to cut my bangs already but I just don't have the time :( Anyone willing to come to my house to cut for me?

Can you guys also see my dark circles? It's horrible and I know I can easily conceal it with a concealer but I have not touched cosmetics for years!! I'm a lazy bum.

By the way, for all my darlings' concern over my eye infection on Saturday, it's still a little red but it's definitely getting better so don't worry okay? Thank you for asking and I LOVE YOU GUYS!!!

Maggie's Birthday at Maria's Cafe, Damansara Perdana

2011-04-27T21:23:00.001+08:00

This entry is going to kill 2 birds with 1 stone.

Initially I was planning to do 2 short entries to separate both the above but I thought it's a waste of time so I might as well write about Mei Gee's birthday and the food at Maria's Cafe together. So, this is going to be a long entry! ~~Go and clear your bladder before you read on wtf.~~

Mei Gee's birthday was celebrated on April 9th so that wasn't too long ago. Not too long ago only.... Damn, I don't want to procrastinate and write old entries but I really don't have time for long entries T_T

Shawn came to pick me up before we adjourned to Hartamas to collect the cakeS that we ordered a few days ahead from them. Notice the 's' in the word cake. You'll know why as you read on.

If you're familiar with Damansara Perdana, you should know where Citibank is and Maria's Cafe is located a few shops away from Citibank at level 3. One thing suck about the building is that they don't have a staircase or escalator outside but instead, we have to walk all the way to the back of the corridor to take a lift up.

Honestly speaking, I don't think it's safe for a girl to take the lift alone at night because it's far behind. PLEASE GET A GUY TO ACCOMPANY YOU!

Main entrance of Maria's Cafe.

For first timer, let me give you a tip. That is a sliding door. So please don't push or pull it. I've seen many jokers pushing the door and ended up standing outside trying to figure out how to open it. You slide it open.

Don't embarrass yourself especially on your first date! You learn this first hand in Contagious Laughter okay wtf.

I'm not going to post many photos of the interiors because you can easily google it out. But I can assure you that the place is beautiful. Love the ambience ;) A good place for a date.

Maria's Restaurant & Cafe.

The early birds.

The 6 of us arrived relatively early (6.45pm) and the place was rather empty at that time. After settling down, we quickly place our order and the girls (Maggie, Kher Li & Siew Ling) began to play around with their DSLR.

I always capture nice candid of people! *proud*

Shin Shin, Maggie, Kher Li.

All 3 are single by the way. LOL they are so going to kill me if they read this!

Shawn and Siew Ling.

Both of them are single too hahahaha.

After a lot of camwhoring, chatting and laughing, we were getting hungry and realised that it was already an hour passed but our food's nowhere to be seen! Even our cold water took about 20-30mins to come!

Omaigod.

Okay I shall skip all the whining and proceed with the food.

Cream of Wild Mushroom Soup.

The mushroom soup is actually pretty good! There are small bits of mushrooms and the soup is thick and flavourful. I actually loved it.

Oxtail Soup.

Oxtail soup is stronger in taste and to those who love oxtail soup will definitely like this. I personally like this too but some of my friends don't like the taste. So order this only if you are a fan of oxtail soup otherwise go for the mushroom soup instead.

Garlic Bread.

Order for a basket of garlic bread was placed later after our food was served and again, it took them 30-45mins to be served. Seriously, why like that?

Garlic bread was okay. Nothing to shout about.

Honey Mustard Grilled Chicken.

Honey mustard grilled chicken is pretty good. All of us loved the sauce and some of my friends who dislike mustard like the sauce too because the mustard taste was quite mild. It's great. Portion's quite small by the way.

Chicken Chop in Black Pepper Sauce.

The dish is okay. I like the thick fries though :)

I forgot the name to this dish but it's delicious! As you can see from the picture above, it is freaking small so it feels like appetizer to us hahahaha. All of us took a bite and sat there waiting for another dish to arrive 30mins later.

Creamy Fettuccine with I-forgot-what.

Although Maria is famous for their steak (we didn't order any because we shared our meal and a couple of our friends can't take beef), but their pasta is reallyyyyyyyy good! All 3 pastas that we ordered were surprisingly beyond our expectation so we ended up ordering another 2 plates (and ended up waiting quite some time for it) to share.

Seafood Spaghetti in Tomato Sauce.

My group was divided into 2 - half of them prefer the creamy fettuccine while the other half liked the seafood spaghetti more.

Creamy fettuccine is thick and creamy but I think small eaters are unable to finish a plate by themselves because it can get a bit too jelak. Seafood spaghetti bolognese is cooked just perfect for my liking!

I hate spaghetti that is too sour, too bland or too watery. This is perfect!

Aglio Olio with Turkey Ham.

I've had many Aglio Olio but for this dish, I find the taste pretty oriental. In a good way of course! A little spicy and not too oily, all of us enjoyed it. If you are not really a meat person or don't have the mood for steak or chicken, go for the pastas! I'm sure you'll love it as much as we do :)

Moist Chocolate Cake with Movenpick Ice Cream.

I read the reviews over the internet that Maria Cafe serves good moist chocolate cake so it's a must-try and we did! It was indeed yummy and, well, moist and the ice-cream complements it well. However, my friends said Alexis's Chocolate Brownie is much better than this. Guess I must try it one fine day.

Overall, I must say that Maria serves really good quality western food but we just can't stand the time we have to wait to be served! Say, we placed our order at 7.00pm, by the time we finished our meal, it was already close to 10.30pm! O_O

I may compromise on the time for the main course to served but why do we have to wait that long for our cold water and garlic bread ah? And the soups too! Maria ought to buckle up on the serving time because nowadays many don't have the patience to wait for an hour for food to be served.

On a positive side, their waiters are polite and helpful *thumbs up* Just speed up will do ;)

After a round of great food, it's time for cake cutting session!

Cakes from My Elephant. Will reserve this for another entry.

Here's Maggie posing with 5 cakes that we bought earlier. Cool or what? :D

Truth be told, all 5 cakes weren't bought for Maggie's birthday. Each of us told Maggie how many slices we'd like to buy for our family so that she could order from the restaurant in advance together with her birthday cake. We are not that crazy to buy 5 cakes to celebrate 1 person's birthday okay! There were just the 7 of us that night!!

For remembrance and the sake of photography, Maggie ended up posing with all 5 cakes :)

Here are the people who came to celebrate her big day!

With Shawn.

Siew Ling.

You know who this person is.

Shin Shin.

Kher Li.

Pik Chee.

Pik Chee only appears later in the photos because she came really late that night.

Singing the usual birthday song~~

Kissing the birthday girl~!

Maggie looked pretty freaked out in the photo some more FML.

It funny when the people at the front row bend down, the rest of the people behind will automatically bend down as well hahahaha. Don't believe you go and check all your group photos!

We bought a mini Polaroid camera for the birthday girl and she loved it so much!

She even took it out and snapped the photos above :)

Don't know whose ugly handwriting is that some more hahahaha wtf.

Before I end this entry, I wanna say something....

Happy 24th Birthday to you, Maggie!

I hope you had a great night with us and stay pretty and slim as always! :D

Interested to try out Maria's Cafe that serves good steak and western food in PJ and don't mind the long waiting time? Write down these information now!

Maria's Cafe
C313A, Center Wing, Metropolitan Square
No 2, Jalan PJU 8/1
Bandar Damansara Perdana
47820 Petaling Jaya
Selangor
Tel: 03-7725 2313
Sun-Thurs: 11.30am-11pm
Fri, Sat, Eve of Public Holidays: 11.30am-12am.

Next entry will blog about the cakes from My Elephant! :)

p/s: Credit goes to Maggie for the photos too!

Interesting T-Shirts

2011-04-23T01:00:00.001+08:00

Myself, being a little to the plump side (yes, I refused to use the word "fat" wtf), I don't wear sleeveless top so eventually, I'm a BIG FAN of t-shirts and nice tops!

Usually donned in t-shirt with jeans or shorts, I always scout around for a cheeky top that represents me well. Even when I don't speak.

Here are a few of my favourites! I used to have a lot of funny ones but threw all away because I'm getting older and those are too... erm... childish.

T-shirt: Drama Queen Vegas (from Taiwan).

I admit at times I'm a drama queen as well as a party monster.

T-Shirt: I'm not PERFECT but I'm LIMITED EDITION (from Bangkok).

True what!!!

T-Shirt: ABC (from The Curve).

Current fav! So cute, no? :p

T-Shirt: Colonel & Ronald (from Taiwan).

Hahaha I always wear this when I'm feeling cheeky and want to have fun! Looking at that 2 jokers always put a smile on my face :D

Great news to share with all of you who read this site! F.O.S. is currently having sales and they have a WIDE selection of t-shirts to choose from and some are sooooo cute and pretty!

Buy 2 for RM32. 3 for RM45!

Despite saving money for trips, I can't resist myself and bought 2 pieces for RM32 from F.O.S One Utama!

T-Shirt: Cute Girl (from F.O.S).

I bought it simply because the girl is cute like me WTF.

T-Shirt: Moody Cow (from F.O.S.)

HAHAHAHAHA! The moment I saw this top, I KNEW I'M GETTING IT! I'll be wearing this to work tomorrow and I'm going to tell my colleagues that I'm Moooooooo~ dy.

The cow's face looks damn pissed, I like! :D

Friends who know me long enough are beginning to get me cheeky top like this!

T-Shirt: I Am The Best Girlfriend of the Year (from Bangkok).

Florence bought it for me when she was holidaying in Bangkok and I love it because I agree with the wordings *thick skin*

Later, another friend randomly sent me a link of this t-shirt website that best describes people who love to drink.

Drinking T-Shirts.

Have a look and have a laugh at it because some are so well written and true! I love t-shirts like this!!!

Just in case you might not know, my friends take me as a person who's good in drinking (never got drunk before) and many have the wrong perception that I love to drink but to be honest, I'm just a social drinker.

WHAT?? I swear!!!

Hence I was given the link because he thought it's something that I can relate to. Malaysian readers might not buy because it's in USD but hey, I can share it with my overseas readers right? :)

LOL I bet many will say that they are not drunk but are getting awesome!

This is sooooo funny, damn it I want it in Malaysia NOW!!! In female size! T_T

Check out that site if you guys are interested, okay?

If anyone of you know where I can get nice and funny t-shirts, please let me know! And not to be too expensive too because my bank account is in "recession" at the moment.

And those of you who are reading this, please try to avoid buying the same tops that I have above because I don't want to see people wearing the same shirt as me. Confirm you guys will look better in it than me since I'm bigger in size! T_T

I'm going off to bed now because I have to work tomorrow FML. Need to earn moolah so no choice.

Moooo~ night everybody~

2011-04-21T19:35:00.000+08:00

Short Update:

If you did realise, I have deleted the chatbox simply because I cannot stand idiots who spammed it with their worthless link. I don't mind if you want to put your link there but at least have some courtesy to say 'Hi' first!

Sorry no free lunch in this world.

Sunnies and Sunday

2011-04-20T23:25:00.003+08:00

Instead of always updating you guys with my outdated entries that happened months ago, I thought maybe I should blog about this outing that I had last Sunday with Siok Yim and Shu Yi first :D

Suddenly this site feels like Astro instead of RTM right? ~~Say yes. Just say it.~~

I bought a new sunglasses by the way. Not that you guys care but I'm so happy I'm still going to say it! 2 of my sunglasses broke within the same week. And I'm not even wearing it but it just broke. Isn't it weird? Like a bad omen!

New sunnies :D

Don't worry I'm not a dangerous driver. I took it while waiting at the traffic light wtf.

I met up with Siok Yim and Shu Yi whom I befriended back in Australia (they were Malaysians, we attended the same college but never got to know each other) at Mid Valley last Sunday for a simple meal and some catch ups!

Lunch at Chilli's.

Love the food! Bottomless chips is missing in the photo though :(

Siok Yim & Shu Yi.

Both appeared in my blog before so I don't think they need any introduction otherwise it'll be repetitive.

We had great lunch together, shared tonnes of stories and cracked some silly jokes throughout. I had so much fun! Thanks girls for having this meet up. We should do it more often ;)

Things that I bought.

Shu Yi and I bought Listerine and we both were given 2 bottles of Johnson Baby Milk bath as complimentary. We were sooooo happy but not until I got home and checked on their expiry date. BOTH WERE EXPIRED FTS!

I thought something's off because why would Johnson & Johnson give out not 1 but 2 bottles of Milk Bath for free when a bottle of Listerine costs less than RM10? That's the catch!

But screw it I'm going to use it to wash my feet *kiamsiap mode on*

The seaweed and candies were souvenirs for me from Korea!!! *beams* Thank you so much, Siok Yim!!!

Confession Of An Online Shopaholic

2011-04-18T23:55:00.003+08:00

I have a confession.

Reason why I'm very broke lately is because I shopped a lot.

Okay, I've cut down on going to the malls because I can't control myself in shopping but the blooming of the internet trend lately is screwing my plan in saving money! And the convenience in making payment (credit card/ Maybank2U/etc) makes our life even easier instead having to queue at the ATM machines to withdraw cash to pay for an item ~~and at risk of being mugged wtf~~.

I was quite reluctant in sharing this new obsession of mine but since my friends read my blog and I always say "sharing is caring" in front of them, I just have to share this with you guys. Promise once you got hooked to it, treat me to some of it, okay? Deal?

People nowadays go online in search of what they want and what IF I tell you that you can also buy things at more than 50% discount online? Did I get your attention now?

My company has been approached by these few companies for promotions but we turned down because it's not our norm to give so much discounts for our products. However, I've bookmarked their page ever since.

Disclaimer: If you got hooked to these sites like my friends, colleagues and my brother did and you've been spending so much money without realising it, I'm not liable to absorb any of your expenses okay? But feel free to treat me in order to thank me *thick skin*

Milkadeal

MyDeal

(Wah... got pretty Thai girl for your viewing pleasure some more!)

Groupon

To date, I have already bought so many vouchers from these 3 sites such as spas, facials, food, car treatments, etc!!! I bought spa vouchers for friend's birthday and the upcoming Father & Mother's Day!

What other better ways to treat your loved ones than to pamper them with spas+scrubs+massages for hours knowing that they deserved it? I also bought a facial voucher for 2.5hours that includes so many treatments at 93% off! What a steal! Say YAY to greater skin! :p

Since I love to travel so much, I thought MAYBE, just maybe I could google a similar website for great hotel deals! I certainly didn't want to splurge on expensive hotels overseas when I can use the money for shopping, right?

However, I didn't manage to find such website in Malaysia (entrepreneurs who are reading this site, faster tap into this market!!) but I found one site that's similar for my oversea readers! :D

Off & Away

Of course it's difficult to find any website like the above for hotels but Off & Away is similar to Ebay whereby you get to bid for the hotels that you're interested in staying! It takes a lot of patience but it's still awesome isn't it? :D

I realised that I have quite a number of oversea readers so if you're traveling and are looking for great hotel deals, do check out the links provided above ;)

I know you all love Contagious Laughter because I just shared so many great sites with you guys! So, shop away and why pay 100% when you can get things at 50-90% off?

Disclaimer: Every purchase and decision made is at your own discretion. I'm not held liable should you encounter any problems like fraud or poor services because I personally do not own the websites above and everything was based on my personal experience. Just blame your luck LOL!

Do read the comments at their website (if there's any) by customers before making a purchase to ensure pleasurable experience ;) That's what my friends, colleagues, family and I did! Websites without comments, you just have to try your luck!

Happy shopping!

Malacca Short Trip 2011

2011-04-16T23:10:00.001+08:00

My university friends are the type who plan things ahead and have to be informed early of a plan or trip. On the other hand, my secondary school friends are the adventurous type who like to have impromptu plans or trips, while the excitement's still there.

I'm just blessed to have these 2 groups of friends because at times, I like things to be well planned out but sometimes, I prefer things to be impromptu instead :)

I was hanging out with secondary school friends and out of a sudden, they decided to have a trip down to Malacca for food. Yes, for food. I mean, what else can we do there besides food? This group of friends has the passion for good food just like I do so we have been going out a lot lately in search of good food. ~~Not to mention the good amount of kilos all of us have gained as well.~~

Driver & navigator of the day: Maggie.
Co-driver: Shawn (but really, all he did was talking & providing entertainment to her).
To help with eating & do all the talking: Jaclyn & Shin Shin (sounds easy but trust me, it isn't...).

Maggie used to live in Malacca for a couple of years hence she's extremely familiar with the little historical state and she used all the shortcuts and small roads to reach to our destinations!! My attempt to memorize the roads and locations failed BIG time. Damn.

Today, I'm going to give you guides and ideas for a short food trip in Malacca! Just follow what we ate and I guarantee you guys go home with big tummy. Sounds good? Let's begin!

Our first stop of the day for breakfast.

Baba Charlie.

This house turned shop specialised in all kinds of Nyonya Cake (kuih), Nyonya Popiah and etc. It's located in the middle of the housing area so, who would have known of this place if not for the locals who used to/live there?

Thank you Maggie for bringing us to this place that sells awesome nyonya kuih *tears of joy* I love kuih...

Look at the variety of things they sell!

A variety of nyonya kuih to spoil everyone.

I swear I was having a difficult time to select the stuff that I wanted because everything seems so tasty! And I didn't want to buy too many as my family members don't fancy kuih as much as I do :(

Breakfast: Nyonya Kuih.
My verdict: Nice and cheap!!! Especially their yam cake is a must buy!

Baba Charlie Nyonya Cake
72, Jalan Tengkera Pantai 2C, 75200 Melaka.
Tel: 06-284 7209; H/P: 019-666 2907
Email: charlienyonyacakes@hotmail.com
(closed on Tuesday)

Thereafter, we adjourned to this famous Restoran Nyonya Makko at Melaka Raya :)

Restoran Nyonya Makko.
"The Best Nyonya Food in town"

Need I say more? Just take a look at the crowd yourself!

It was already full house but thankfully, they have a table for us beside the entrance so we don't have to wait for one. At that time, we were already famished so it's bad if they don't feed us asap.

Maggie and Shawn.

Shawn stands more than 1.9m tall so eventually, our group gets public attention all the time. Even the grandma at Baba Charlie was so impressed with him, she kept talking to him and ignored the rest of us :p

The lunch was soooo good, I just want to eat. And eat. And just focus on eating.

Thank goodness I'm not a food blogger. Otherwise I'll be salivating already while taking photos of every single dishes.

Lunch: Nyonya food.
My verdict: If you love Nyonya food and are here in Malacca, you MUST dine here!!!

Restoran Nyonya Makko
123, Taman Melaka Raya,
Off Jalan Parameswara (Bandar Hilir)
75000 Melaka
Tel: +606 284 7037

Lunch: 11.30am - 2.45pm
Dinner: 6pm - 9.30pm
(closed on Tuesdays)

Since we have some time to spare before dinner, we took a walk at Mahkota Parade (I get to check on my outlet & staff as well) and Dataran Pahlawan Megamall before heading over to the Jonker Street for a walk.

Jonker Street!!! :D

Will you judge me if I confess that I actually love pasar malam (night market)? Yes I do because there are plenty of street food that I love!

And that's one of the main reason why I love Taiwan so much - many night markets and street food! And not to mention handsome guys too :p

Okay back to this entry again.

Colourful.

Artistic.

Must take tourissy pic!!!
(the uncle looked so lonely... Awww...)

Jonker Street with CNY mood.

What is an entry without the author's face, right? XD

Check out my fav snowflake necklace :D

That's Shawn's view when he "looks down" at us hahahaha.

I miss my long hair out of a sudden *sniff*

Not long later, we decided to have our high tea at....

Jonker Dessert 88.

To know how popular a restaurant/cafe is in Malacca, just take a look at the amount of crowd queuing in front of the shop will do. The funny thing is, people really don't mind waiting just to eat at that particular shop even knowing that the queue was long!

The first time we were there, we thought the queue was ridiculous so we decided to come back later and the second time we came back, the queue was miraculously gone. Weird huh?

Love the old interior!

Cendol & Durian Cendol.

Seriously, after reading all the raves about how great Jonker's cendol is, I thought it was very... ordinary. It was tooooo sweet and in fact, I think the rojak van nearby Kelana Lrt offers better cendol wtf.

The girls :)

L-R: Shin Shin, Jaclyn, Maggie.

Shawn attempted to have a group photo taken but instead of asking people to help us out, he insisted to do it the "camwhoring" way and here's the result....

It was HORRIBLE hahahahahaha!!!

Shawn's face got cut off and I was talking FOL. My candid never turns out well. NEVER!!! T_T

High Tea: Cendol at Jonker Dessert 88.
My verdict: Nothing special about the cendol but I heard that their laksa is pretty good so you might want to try that when you're there ;)

Get all the info from their website at Jonker88.com.

After our high tea, our plan was to eat satay celup but after driving pass the place and saw the ridiculous queue in front of the shop, we decided to give that a pass as we didn't want to waste our time queuing.

We headed straight for dinner at this large open food court similar to Ming Tien food court style at Taman Megah, PJ.

Maggie recommended this place because of their greattt BBQ chicken wings and Portugese Grill Fish & Squid.

(I forgot to take pic of the Grill Fish because it was so good, I was busy eating :p)

Orh jien was tasty and the chee cheong fun was smooth. I'm not really a fan of chee cheong fun but the rest loved it so much! The Portuguese Grill Fish, Sotong and BBQ Chicken Wings were my favourite!

Dinner: Portuguese Grill Fish, Sotong, Orh Jien and Chee Cheong Fun.
My Verdict: Everything that we ordered were great but since it's an open air food court, it's can be pretty hot for some :)

Newton Food Court
Jalan Parameswara, Melaka.

After seeing so many photos of the food we had, you might think that our food hunt's coming to an end right? I thought so too but I was W.R.O.N.G! Maggie said we are having supper immediately after our dinner!!! =A=

(Thank God we skipped satay celup!)

After riding in the car for about 20-30 minutes, we're here at a Malay village called Medan Ikan Bakar Umbai Pernu. Long name I know.

Sign of the food here is good!

I asked Maggie what's so great about this place and she said that the seafood sold here is extremely fresh and cheap!

I took a look around and realised that there are SO MANY stalls selling the same thing! So how would we know which stall is better than the other? She said yes, all stalls sell the same thing so we just have to look for a stall that sells the freshest seafood and settle for that.

So, when you are out on a food hunt with friends, be sure to bring along a friend who's aunty/uncle enough to know how to differentiate fresh seafood and not :p

Friends doing their job at selecting fresh seafood to be cooked.

Be sure to bargain for a bit (although it's very cheap already but still!) and don't have to be afraid because the people there are all so friendly and nice!

Must ask for the price before placing order! You don't want to end up like the man who paid RM13,000 for eating ikan patin, right? I certainly don't want to appear in the newspaper for such reason! -.-''

Fresh and cheap seafood :D

Our supper - Squid, Fish & Prawns.

Our ultimate favourite was the squid! It's sooooo chewy! The prawns were juicy and big too. Fish was fresh but I prefer fresh fish to be steamed instead of being fried sweet and sour style but unfortunately, the Malays don't do that Chinese style :(

But still nice nonetheless :)

HAHAHAHA Shawn was startled when I caught him candid and we both were laughing non-stop thereafter! After the photo above was posted in FB, he said he looked ugly and others couldn't help but to agree hahahahaha FHL...

Supper: Seafood (Fried Squid, Prawns cooked with Oats and Sweet & Sour Fish).
My verdict: Very fresh and cheap!!!!

Medan Ikan Bakar Umbai Pernu
Pengkalan Umbai, Medan Ikan Bakar Pernu-Umbai,
75460 Melaka

Oh yah! Before we had our dinner, we purposely made a trip back to Dataran Pahlawan shopping mall to buy the famous Mille Crepe in Malacca!!!

As we were in the rush, I did not take any pic of the beautiful but small cafe. However, I guess you can try googling the photos over the net. That's the power of the internet, no? :)

The cafe that sells the famous Mille Crepes in Malacca is none other than Nadeje Patisserie!

Mille Crepes from Nadeje.

I bought 3 slices for my family to savor and the flavours are Mocha (I think! I can't remember it's Mocha, Tiramisu or Coffee actually FML), Original and Strawberry.

My family loves it! They said it's really nice especially the Original one. My friends who went to Nadeje a month later bought a whole (not per slice) Mille Crepe in Coffee flavour! They said that flavour is the best of all! Aren't they insane or something? LOL!!!

Dessert: Mille Crepes.
My verdict: I LIKED IT!!!

Nadeje Sdn Bhd
G-23 & 25, Jalan PM4
Plaza Mahkota, 75000 Melaka
Tel: 06-283 8750

Nadeje Cafe Sdn Bhd
Lot No. UB051, 052 & 053
Dataran Pahlawan Melaka Megamall
Jalan Merdeka, 75000 Bandar Hilir Melaka
Tel: 06-284 3469

When we came back to PJ, we went around hunting for a good Mille Crepe to satisfy our cravings but unfortunately, we were unable to find one that's comparable to the one we had at Nadeje :(

Friends tried the famous Mille Crepes at Food Foundry (Section 17) but they said it isn't nice at all. While we were having dinner at Empire Shopping Mall last month, we bought 4 slices of Mille Crepes from Oprah to try but still, not as good as Nadeje.

I guess we have to make a trip down to Malacca just for a good slice of Mille Crepe!

p/s: I can't wait to see Siok Yim and Shu Yi tomorrow!!! Miss them so much! :D

2011-04-14T23:40:00.000+08:00

Aloha~!

I got myself a new top from The Curve last Sunday! :D

ABC top, RM25.

ABC top is what I call it. Short and simple.

Isn't it cute?? And check out the 3 letters in colour! ;) Apparently the clothes are designed by the seller so everything is limited edition. This top only has 1 piece available too and I'm glad I won't be seeing others wearing the same top as I am :)

Short update for today because a long one will be up tomorrow!

Stay tuned!

Unifi

2011-04-11T23:23:00.002+08:00

My house is officially running on Unifi!!!!

I know you are jealous hehehe...

I can't express how happy I was with the new internet speed because Streamyx has been giving us a lot of problems for the past couple of months (page can't load and all) so I'm glad that my area finally has Unifi :D

The download speed is about 130-180kb/s!!!! Awesome right?

From now onwards, my entire life will be filled with fast internet speed like Australia because the internet in my office is equally fast! But gosh, I can't imagine going back to the crawling speed after getting used to this!

Since I'm in a great mood today, I'm going to give you guys a tip! For fast and free wifi in PJ, you can try out B.Timor (please ask for the cafe's name if you are interested. I don't want to write in full just in case my manager googles it out -_-) at Taman Megah!

I often brought my own laptop to work just so that I can leech the internet from our cafe downstairs to download my stuff LOL! The speed that I get every time is about 130-160kb/s (might vary for you so don't blame me if your speed is slow!)

That's all for today! ;) I'm old and I need to sleep early nowadays....

Colonel & Ronald

2011-04-09T11:30:00.000+08:00

Lookie!

Colonel from KFC and Ronald from McDonald can be best friends too! :D

Absolutely love this cute top that I got from Taiwan last year!! And it's really cheap too - I think it's around RM10!

Will do a proper update soon~!

I Can Has Purple Hair!

2011-04-07T00:20:00.003+08:00

2 Sundays ago I went to get my hair permed and coloured!

Initially my stylist planned to dye light brown for me like I always had but this time, I kept telling him that I wanted purple. I had ALWAYS wanted to try purple but he never want to dye it for me last year!

In order to make me happy, he reluctantly did it for me and I must say that I liked it :D

Many said that they are not used to seeing me in black hair (it's purplish black) but under the sunlight, I love how the colour turns out to be :)

At least I've tried the colour that I had wanted to try! ~~So even if the world ends next year, I have no regrets wtf.~~

This is how my hair looks like in indoor.

Yes, it's the boring black hair and I admit I look more mature now T_T

But here's how it looks like under the sunlight!!!

You don't think I'll really stand under the sun to camwhore, don't you? LOL!

The colour is unedited! Love the purple!!!!!!!!! Just admit that you guys like it too!!! :p

However, the colour is beginning to fade to maroon and later, brown I think :( How I wish the purple can stay longer but oh well, not that I'll complain since I was being told again and again beforehand that the colour fades very quickly.

Will update again tomorrow if I don't have to work overtime! ;)

Where's my BB?

2011-03-29T23:35:00.000+08:00

Just a little note to all my friends who so happened did not read my message on Facebook.

My Blackberry is in the factory at the moment.

I know. Shit happens and it happened to me. My BB is only 6 months old and the battery overheats so I'm forced to charge it every 5 hours! The seller advised me to send the phone back to the factory for a thorough check (I bought original and not AP) and now I'm resort to using an old iPhone for the time being.

That means I can't BBM for the next few days! However, I'm still reachable at Whatsapp, Twitter, Facebook and MSN anytime ;)

Oh! If you follow me on Twitter (I update my status frequently with many interesting news and happenings without much filtering compared to blogging. Follow me if you didn't!), you'll know that I've cut+permed my hair, dyed it purplish black and my fringe is more mangkuk than before wtf.

I wanted to post a photo up but since the colour is so close to black, I need to have the photo taken directly under the sunlight to show you guys. Truth be told, I admit I'm not quite used to seeing myself in such dark coloured hair because I've had light brown for so many years!

On a positive note, I'm trying to convince myself that being a red head is fun :)

p/s - I want my BB back T_T And I'm considering getting a new iPhone just to... play games. I need to work hard for more moolah!!!

Workshop and My Next Splurge!

2011-03-27T01:20:00.004+08:00

I had a wonderful weekend with friends at Genting (thanks to all who came!!! Will blog about it soon!) and just when I thought my Monday would suck badly, I was wrong!

I represented my company to attend a workshop by Suria KLCC and I had so much fun!!

Most of them were either senior executives or managers while I'm the youngest and with the least experience but pawned most of them in Q&A and strategy games (individual & group)! Our team also won the challenge based on my strategy! I'm glad that I contributed and that makes my day!!! :D

Besides, those managers from those big organizations are so friendly and humorous too and we all clicked well together ;)

My great Monday didn't end so soon too!

Eunice was so nice to walk all the way to KLCC to have lunch with me and she walked over again after work to accompany me as I didn't want to get squashed like sardines to take lrt at 5.30pm.

We went for window shopping at Isetan and Bodyshop and she was so evil to introduce this to me...

Body Shop's Japanese Cherry Blossom Eau De Toilette.

It smells soooooo good that I almost wanted to buy it on the spot but I thought I need to save the money to fix my "expired" hair so I put it back *sob*

This is what I'm going to splurge on for next month!!! ROAR!

I think the downside to this is that the bottle looks like a vodka bottle or....

...Minyak angin wtf.

TL babe, can you please tell your company to change the a nicer packaging or something??? I don't want a minyak angin bottle on my shelf wei!

I also realised that I'm a sucker for Cherry Blossom scents because my favourite perfume at the moment is DKNY Fresh Blossom :D I love to buy perfumes because I like to smell good hahahaha wtf who doesn't?

So after our window shopping, we both had steamboat porridge at Jalan Ipoh before she sends me home to my doorstep instead of throwing me off at the nearest lrt station LOL!

This nice girl is still single! In fact, I have many very sweet and nice girls who are still single so anyone want speed dating please email me wtf.

I better hit the sack now because I have to wake up early in the am to head down to KL to get my hair fixed! I hope my stylist don't screw up my hair!! *fingers crossed*

2011-03-22T23:15:00.001+08:00

Sometimes, city people never fail to amaze me....

My friends were actually fascinated by theses tortoises that they stood there for quite some time just to look at them =A=

I don't get it. Even until today, I still don't.

2011-03-22T00:25:00.004+08:00

I have this random funny thought that flashes through my mind a moment ago.

I forgot to mention that Fish Farm (the entry below) has this stage in the middle of the pond where there will be people singing at night to entertain the diners.

The stage on the right.

And you know, cafes like Station 1 that have singer(s) singing at night and if you are confident that you can sing better than the performer that night, you can actually PK him/her?

So... I was thinking, what if one of the diners would like to PK the singer at Fish Farm that night?

I guess that joker has to swim across in order to do so hahahaha

I thought it was funny so I decided to share before I go to bed wtf. I can't believe I'm so lame.

On another note:

Did you realise that the size of my photos have gotten bigger in my entries? I managed to solve the problem!!! A million thanks to all who helped! :)

Veg Fish Farm Thai Restaurant, Hulu Langat

2011-03-18T18:20:00.001+08:00

Last Sunday I paid this place a visit which took us about 30 minutes (or more as my dad is a slow driver) of drive from Petaling Jaya.

You might wonder why the hell would I come all the way here merely for food?

It's funny. Last week, I was told by 2 colleagues (on 2 different days) that they went to this restaurant with their families that serves AWESOME steamed fish and I just have to give this place a visit. And coincidentally, they both went to same place!!!

So I thought I should totally give this place a try no matter what!

Being a person who plans ahead, especially when I'm the organiser/host, I did a little research from the internet on what dishes to order and what to expect from there.

Being an awesome blogger, here are my personal tips to get there:

1. Drive a 4WD.
2. Don't drive a new car.
3. But don't drive a 10 year old car too.

Reason: The road leading to the restaurant inside is unpaved with a zillion stones that'll probably scratch your car and to make your drive interesting, the road is sibeh steep too!

However, upon arrival, you'll think that this place is worth it ;)

The place looks so cool and serene as it's surrounded by the jungle.

I like this kind of village feel restaurant! Something that you can hardly find in PJ :)

The place is not air-conditioned and has a lot of mosquitoes too. Please be informed!

From the entrance, you'll be greeted by the workers grilling awesome crabs/ squids/ lambs/ etc to serve your tummy.

Looking at this is making me hungry...

Wong mama said on our next round of visit, we shall order this! I CAN'T WAIT! Yes I'm a glutton hence this size LMAO!

There's also a dessert section that serves Mango Sticky Rice and etc.

Here comes the food that we ordered on that day.

Mango Kerabu (RM12)

Looking at the table next to us, Wong papa thinks that their kerabu looks good and wanted to give it a try.

It's actually good to have this as appetizer because it's a bit sourish that opens your appetite. However, we find the kerabu a bit too sour for our liking.

Seafood Tomyam (RM18)

Not bad! Tomyam is flavourful and I like it sour enough plus how fresh the ingredients are. It'll be better if it's spicier though!

Pandan Chicken (RM2.50/pc)

The pandan chicken is well marinated and I liked it! But, Wong papa thinks that the chicken is a little too small for RM2.50.

Side track a bit. My all time favourite pandan chicken is from the William's mamak nearby my house! Their pandan chicken tastes equally good and HUGE. RM2.50 too! However, it has been a year since I last went there so I'm not sure if they've increased the price or the size has changed or not.

Paku belacan (Big - RM15)

Nothing to rave about. Something that you can get at almost all restaurants.

BBQ Lamb (RM15)

I loved it!!! Although it doesn't look good in the picture but let me tell you, the meat is so tender and well marinated. I wished we ordered a big portion instead :(

Some might find it too sweet (eg. Wong papa again!) but I think it's just nice!

And so, the main dish of the day is this!!!

Thai Style Lime Steamed Tilapia (RM30)

Since they rear the fishes there and capture it to cook for us after we placed our order, it is understood that the fish is really fresh and the way the steamed it with their sweet and spicy sauce, this thing is simply delicious!

Even until today, my little brother and I still miss this fish and would like to go back again for it.

From the review over the internet, many bloggers prefer Salted BBQ Fish over this Thai Style Steamed Fish - to which I'm really tempted to try but thanks to my elder brother who doesn't take fish, parents thought 2 dishes of fish are a little too much :(

Maybe next time!

Finally, to end our lunch, brother wanted to try Mango Sticky Rice because, sadly, none of us in the family have tried before.

Mango Sticky Rice (RM8)

I was worried we might get a sour mango because that's what my colleague got when she ordered this dessert. Lady luck was on our side as we got a super sweet mango~!

The sticky rice was okay. The coconut milk was a little too watery though. Still, I enjoyed it thanks to the sweet mango ;)

My brother's friend.

More advises for you guys who might want to give this place a try - go during the day. Preferably lah.

I heard that it's really crowded during dinner hour whereby you'll have to wait to secure a table. Besides, the rocky roads leading to this restaurant is narrow, steep and without any street lights! So it's quite dangerous!!! Not that I question your driving skills but you'll never know if other drivers are as skillful as you are, right?

If you were to go at night, be ready to battle with mosquitoes! I went during the day and I came home with many fresh new bites so yea, I guess it'll be worse at night.

On a positive side, my colleagues said it's prettier at night (but you can't see the pond, the forest and all in the dark!) so you decide ;) I might want to go at night for a try too!

Address:
Restaurant Thai Fish Farm
Km 4, Jalan Ampang Hulu Langat,
68000 Ampang, Selangor
Tel:017-251 5235, 019-260 6493

To get there, you'll have to go up the hill to Ampang Look-Out Point, pass by that place (which will be on your right) and go further for another few kilometers and you'll see an entrance on your right with the restaurant's signage as well as a few fake firecrackers.

Happy exploring~! :)

Side Swept Bangs

2011-03-16T23:30:00.002+08:00

Today I attempted to do a side sweep fringe instead of my usual bangs but I guess it's not much of a difference.

Failed, but still worth a shot!!

Yours sincerely.

Oh! I'll be visiting my hair stylist next month and I can't wait to change to a new hairstyle and colour! My hair now is going to reach to my waist soon and I don't like it so long either. Next month it is!

I'm tempted to do a food entry next! Since it has been quite awhile since I last blogged, I have a few recommended places to blog about :) Let me think which entry I should post up first!

Good night peeps!

2011-03-15T00:30:00.001+08:00

Any kind soul out there who knows a bit of HTML?

It's easy... can someone teach me how to adjust the size of the photos posted in all my entries? It's SO SMALL I NEED A MAGNIFYING GLASS TO SEE wtf!!! I upload using blogger instead of Photobucket (whereby I can adjust the size) because Photobucket is inconvenient and always gives me error :(

Jaclyn Bakes: Chocolate Fondant

2011-03-14T20:00:00.003+08:00

What did I baked lately?

Chocolate Fondant.
What a sinful indulgence...

It was a special request from my little brother as he lovessss the Chocolate Fondant from Cafe Barbera and instead of paying so much each time he craves for it, I might as well bake it myself!

I'm not being a cheapskate. Instead, take it as an unconditional love I have for my brother wtf.

After I've baked for him, he loved it so much so that he's practically asking me to bake this for him every single week!!! I am happy because he enjoys eating what I bake but at the same time, I'm lazy too!

Chocolate Fondant (or some might call it Chocolate Lava/Lava Cake/Chocolate Volcane, etc) is really easy to bake but there are too many recipes over the net and after running through a few recipes, I picked 1 that I deemed as the best and amended a little.

Last week, my manager (who runs a cafe) tried and taught me how to make this sinful little thing even better! Now my Chocolate Fondant is reaching a new height and I certainly can't wait to try it out! :p

Barbecue Night

2011-03-13T23:40:00.003+08:00

I had a great barbecue night with uni friends last November!

That's right. It's about 4 months ago LMAO!

Initially I thought of giving this entry a pass but it was such a great night with the beloved ones so I guess it's better to be late than never! In fact, I'll slowly post up some outdated entries in the next couple of day hahahaha FYL!

Shu Yi, Siok Yim, Angie and I started our day slightly earlier by visiting to the Tesco Cheras for some grocery shopping! Have I mentioned to you before that I love shopping for groceries?

Then, we're back to Shu Yi's house ~~for labour work~~ to start work! That's me squatting and looking un-glam for setting up the barbecue pit. At least I have proof that I helped out!!! :D

Third picture is Boon Leng using the traditional way of starting the fire - by using his mouth HAHAHAHAHA. And as you can see from the photo, he's working hard. Real hard. Because using mouth is tiring LOL!!!

These 2 are the ones who worked the hardest that night in making our tummy happy. Thank you! :D

Just to clarify, we actually invited 2 guys over but the other guy... Sigh... I shall save this joker's face and story later in this entry.

The awesome good food we had that night. Shu Yi's parents were so kind to buy some 'lemang' and fried beehoon from pasar malam for us! That's why we have so much to eat :)

We even bought Taiwanese sausages and sweet corns!

AND WE HAVE A VERY HILARIOUS STATEMENT FROM SIOK YIM WHEN SHE WAS FORCED TO EAT THE SWEET CORNS LOL!

Not only she's pretty, she has a good sense of humour too!

Love this photo edited by Siok Yim!

She thinks this photo is sweet so she edited it to look even sweeter~ ^^

Angie, Jee Meei, Boon Kee, Siok Yim and Boon Leng.

Another photo edited by Siok Yim! All of us had so much fun!

We played musical chair wtf.

No, that's obviously a joke. Trust me.

Told you that they both worked hard that night :)

We worked hard too. In eating *paiseh*

Shu Yi's mummy was so kind to cook us some dessert too! Mad awesome parents she has!!!

He is the joker who came really late!!! Apparently Jensen was eating satay in Kajang with his friends before he came over wtf.

I think he didn't want to barbecue those stuff so he came late to eat only. So as a revenge, we forced him to gobble down all the leftover chicken wings! He said he won't be touching chicken for the next couple of days hahahahahaha...

Boon Leng was another joker who perfected his skills in barbecuing marshmallows at the end of the dinner when all of us were stuffed. He went around with that skewer asking us to eat his perfectly barbecued marshmallows T_T

The dinner ended at about 11+ and I stayed back for a ~~beer session~~ chat with Shu Yi till 1+ in the morning. It was really a great and fun night with all these humorous people. Let's do this more often, shall we? ;)

New Banner, Layout & Colour!

2011-03-11T00:00:00.003+08:00

This may sound embarrassing but I have no idea how to transfer all my comments from Haloscan to this new template -_- I have been using Haloscan for years so my comments are all there and now my blog seems so empty without any!

I guess everything should start afresh including this?

12:00am - It's finally up!!!

It has been a long, long time since I last did such a big revamp on my blog! Back then, I was either too lazy or couldn't be bothered at all. What's more, I have to deal with HTML codes as all these available templates weren't there for me to choose from. Now everything is so easy!

This is the banner that took me an hour to do in my office while the layout, colour and font adjustments took me another 1 hour to complete.

You like it??? I LOVE IT!

Initially I wanted to have the maroon and white combination but I thought maroon is a bit too "fierce" and it'll make my blog looks dark. I wanted something bright and happy hence this outcome :)

I'm going to stick to this for some time.

I'm going to bed smiling now~

Under Construction

2011-03-10T20:23:00.000+08:00

I was so determined to revive my blog that I want to change a brand new banner as well as the colour layout.

However, being a person who is fickle minded as well as a perfectionist, I have changed the design again and again. Every single day I spent a little time thinking about the design that I want for this new banner.

Finally, I knew what I wanted and am satisfied with the new design. Since I have limited knowledge in Photoshop, this is the best that I can do and I'm happy with it :)

Will try to get everything up by tonight! Please anticipate LOL!

My Purple Cheongsam

2011-02-21T01:30:00.000+08:00

Sorry for not keeping this site updated after so long!

Being a worker and no longer a student is not fun at all! I hardly have time to sleep hence I do not have the time to blog too :(

But fret not! I've decided to revamp this site with new layout/colours and hopefully a new banner too, if I have the time to do so. That means I'll keep this site updated as often as possible, even if it's a short entry ;)

New year, new start and a layout!

So, how's everyone CNY going? I had a great one this year with friends and relatives! Here's a photo of myself in my new cheongsam for this year's company dinner :)

Simple purple Cheongsam for 2011

If you have great memory, you'll realise that my cheongsam this year is much simpler than last year's! But somehow, I prefer this more as this fits me perfectly whereby my cheongsam last year was a little loose :)

Oh! I love the material and pattern for this purple piece! Absolutely worth the money paid!!!

Come to think of it, I have more than 6 months worth of entries to blog but I procrastinated till today and failed to post up a single one! LOL!!! Let's see if I'll improve in the next couple of weeks, okay?

Please don't give up on this site yet! I have a lot to talk about. It's just that 24 hours a day isn't enough for me :( I need to manage my time properly and get this site active again!

Stay with me okay? *buay paiseh*