Happy Hari Raya and Selamat Deepavali

The festive holidays are coming. I get to go home for a short holiday, and I do have quite a few friends’ places to visit when I get back. I wonder if I can make it to all their places in a day, considering that I’m going back tomorrow itself which is already Deepavali.

The sad thing is… I won’t be able to eat much of the food that I’ll get My stomach is still mad at me and refuses to digest food properly. Sayang… don’t like that lah… Deepavali once a year only wor… At least I’ll get to meet up with many of my friends whom I haven’t seen for a while. Deepavalis and Chinese New Years never fail to reunite the whole bunch of nuts.

I wonder if the traffic will be bad tomorrow. I’m leaving at 8 in the morning. The journey takes about 3 and a half hours under safe conditions. I’ll be going home along with my sister, and we have to be back early because we are supposed to be home in time for lunch, which will be at the first stop of my circuit That’s my mum’s idea anyway, because we’re going to my family’s longtime friends’ home. It has already become a customary thing. Deepavalis just ain’t the same without first dropping by their place.

After that, I suppose I have 2 friends to visit, that is if I don’t get any more invitations. One of my friends who usually has an open house is not having one this year, so I have one place short to visit. But then again less places to go means more friends I’ll see at the same spot And these 2 places are definitely good enough for me to get all the yummy-yummy-yummy food. Which I hope I won’t overindulge. Which is unlikely. I’ll likely end up sick. Again. But hey, that’s me! Eat first, die later Indian curry (provided they do not consist of a tonne of chilli) is to die for. Literally.

By the way, I would like to take this opportunity to wish all of you a very Happy Hari Raya and Selamat Deepavali Multiracial country, we must mix-mix mah! To those who will be doing any driving or have parents who will, please remind yourself and them to be extra careful on the roads. Let’s all have a safe trip home, and enjoy the holidays!

*** Makes a mental note to remind myself ***

Say No, Think of Your Loved Ones

Big time sick. Brain not working well. Not writing much.

I think I got myself a minor case of food poisoning. Which is still bad enough. Package came with slight fever. Batteries sold separately.

Must be the pasar malam last night. Apparently, after comparing what me and my friends ate during that night, I realised there was something only I ate.

Cockles.

No more of those. Never again.

Pasar-not-so-Malam

Wasn’t such a nice day in college today. Don’t know why, but I just didn’t feel happy. Maybe because I was tired. I was exceptionally tired for some unknown reasons. Or maybe because I had mood swings Guys can have them too! Hahaha…

Fortunately, the day ended in a far better way. After our classes at 5, we had a short progression briefing on our coming semester, and the single most important yet horrifying component in Level 3 - the Final Year Project. We were given a few sheets of paper, which gave us a preview of what our FYP will be. The first thing I did was look through the requirements of our projects and the samples topics, and boy.. it was unnerving. The requirements looked beyond challenging, and the topics looked almost foreign to me. 3 and a half years in my college didn’t prepare most of us for something like this. It soon dawned on me that there will be a significant change in the way we have to work in the very near future. We are given 9 months on the FYP, but given the scale of the project 9 months isn’t as much as many would think.

And that’s how big the project is.

Anyhow, the briefing didn’t take long and before long I was off to the comic store with Ivan, Edward and Wei How. It has become their routine to go to the comic store almost every week, and so it has sort of become mine as well. The problem is… the comic stores only carry chinese comics, and well… don’t ask. The only redeeming reason why I’d go is that at the very least comics have pictures! Lots of them

After they’re done with their customary two-stop drop-by’s, we were thinking of what to eat. Coincidentally, it’s Tuesday today and there’s the pasar malam right around the corner. So we decided to splurge there. Night markets aren’t that a cheap place to look for food. Sure, a little kuih here and a little drink there might be cheap at first, but rest assured there will be many ‘littles’ that will amount to something pretty huge. We started off searching for our main meal and decided on char kuay teow. Pasar malam char kuay teows aren’t that refined so to speak, it’s usually made en masse. But none of us cared much because anything that could feed our hungry stomachs were good enough. Nothing particularly special about that meal, can’t expect much though.

After that was the real jalan-jalan cari makan session. I bought myself some ‘mah chee‘ or however you spell it. It’s some glutinous cake coated with fine blended peanut and sugar. It’s something a good friend of mine taught me to enjoy. I wish I have pictures to show but I don’t run around with my camera all the time, especially not in night markets Wei How on the other hand bought himself some ‘mang chang kueh’. I always thought that this kuih sounded funny because ‘mang chang’ could mean grumpy in Cantonese. Grumpy Cake sounds interesting to say the least

What I found after that was earth-shattering. Sticks of fried chicken gizzard! Fwahhh… only a ringgit each. They were irresistable. Pardon me if some (if not most) of you find that rather unpleasant, but man that’s what I call a delicacy I tried converting my friends to the Legion of the Chicky Gizzard but failed miserably. Only Ivan seemed to share the same enthusiasm towards the mouth-watering stick of gizzards I was holding.

I was happily munching away my preciousssss while we made our way to our last stop. We had ’sai mai lo’ for our dessert. Fruity ice cream with ice shavings and real fruits. Nothing particularly special about those, sort of like… well.. ice cream and fruits? Haha… I was still dazed from the ecstacy that the gizzards gave me. Even now I’m still thinking about them. Man, I’m sick.

It was a good dinner. Plenty of fun, plenty of food.

Long live the SP gang.

Three words

There are only 3 words in my mind right now.

Dark Crusade

and

WebRatio

The long awaited expansion to the totally awesome Dawn of War RTS series is finally here. And it’s good. Reeeeeaaaal good. Good enough for me whine like a little kid when I got entirely annhilated by the computer AI. That’s when you get the funny feeling of embarassment and awe both at the same time.

Let me attempt to inject some sense of awe into you…

Ok.. I’m guessing that didn’t really work on you. If it didn’t, congrats! You’re not a geek.

If you’re starting to salivate over the pictures already, welcome aboard!

WebRatio on the other hand is pretty awe-inspiring too, but in a rather different manner. I could go on and on and on telling you about the awesomeness of it, but to sum it up - it’s the mother-of-all-imaginable-web-modelling-and-design-and-authoring-and-structuring-and creation-and-modelling-did-i-already-say-modelling-ultra-super-duper tool.

Yup, that’s about it. That wouldn’t make much sense to the general population (I doubt it will make any sense to geeks alike) but words don’t do justice to it.

You gotta feel it to believe it.

Salt, Pepper and Kimchi

Today was a fun and long day. I didn’t do much in the morning (I was only left with one hour of ‘morning’ :P), but it all began during late afternoon. Edward, the revered anime-manga-Master came to pick me up from my place along with Ivan the Gaylord. We drove to the nearest LRT station and parked our car there, and we then proceeded with our usual routine of taking the LRT to Hang Tuah station. The LRT was exceptionally packed today. I knew it was a weekend, but yet it was more crowded that usual. Anyhow that didn’t us bother much and as soon as we got off Hang Tuah, we walked to Low Yat.

We were going to Low Yat to get a birthday present for a friend whose birthday was today (which was over 4 hours ago). The first thing we did when we arrived was actually have our lunch. We went to Shokudo in the Lower Ground section. We discovered that the food there was pretty good for their price not too long ago, and since then we’ve been going there whenever we’re in Low Yat. I don’t really like Japanese food actually, but there are some exceptions from time to time I ordered “Ten Don”… just because it sounded cute. Haha. Okay not really, but it was because they told me they didn’t have any beef left when I ordered “Suki Yaki Beef Udon”… which sounded even cuter In any case “Ten Don” turned out to be a big bowl of rice with lots of tempura and some sauce-fried vegetables. I don’t usually say this but I was stuffed when I finished the meal. It was surprisingly filling. While I was eating, Edward kept attempting to force his portion of Kimchi onto my bowl. I absolutely HATE kimchi. That thing is horrible. That’s one of the very few things that I don’t like to eat. Ivan on the other hand was making everyone sick. He took some mango pudding and…. mixed in chilli sauce, the evil kimchi, soya bean, miso soup, seaweed and some prawn shells. He took a picture of it and earlier I thought it’d be cool to post it here, but just looking at it makes me sick. For the general welfare of my audience, I’d better not. Haha..

Anyhow this was what we got for our friend:

Razer Krait

It’s a performance mouse with killer looks - orange lights! That alone is worth the money Too bad it wasn’t for me.

After we bought the mouse, we hurried to Imbi Plaza. Ivan got himself the new Dawn of War - Dark Crusade DVD, which he kindly borrowed to me first even before he got the chance to play! Although he’s sick at times with his mango-pudding-kimchi-chilli-soya-miso-nausea-inducing antics, but most of the time he ain’t that bad. By that time, it was already drizzling. Still, we had to walk all the way back from Low Yat to Hang Tuah. The Monorail was too packed, walking would have taken far less time. During the trip back from Hang Tuah, I saw something despicable. A group of suspicious men barged into the coach that I was in right before the door closed. They weren’t locals from what I can see. They were acting strange, rather fidgety most of the time. When we reached one of the stops, two girls were supposed to get off the coach but just as the doors open, the group of men quickly pushed through the crowd to the door and one of the men “dropped” his key. He somehow then pretended to pick up his key while grabbing the girl’s leg, not letting her go. What the other men did during that period of time even I wouldn’t know, as I was noticing what the man with the keys was doing. I assumed that they failed to steal anything because they stayed in the train for a few stops after that. And it was pretty obvious from that point that they were up to something. He kept looking around, I’m sure he was searching for potential victims. When they moved slightly away from me, Ivan came to me and whispered that they might be a syndicate of pickpockets. At one time he got surrounded by them and one of them even tried to reach for his wallet. These bunch of people are simply sampah masyarakat. Doing this in broad daylight, stealing from unsuspecting victims.

If you ever happen to take a train or public transport, please take precautions:

• Lookout for a group of men hurrily boarding the transport at the same time.
• Take note if these men are fidgety and looking around in a suspicious manner.
• Whenever you have to get off the train, immediately hold your belongings tightly and if you have items in the pocket, place your hands in your pockets.
• Stay alert. They will very well create some diversions, like how the guy who pretended to drop his key.
• Move closely with your friends. Don’t give them space.

From the moment I noticed they were up to something, I watched them closely until they got off the second last station. I felt like punching one of the guys, at the same time I felt so helpless. We’ve got nothing against them. No proof. No evidence. I hope they get run over by the train. Bastards.

Anyhow I got off the last station to Edward’s car, and he drove me home. I sat down and rested for only 10 minutes, then my friend Phil said he will be coming right away to pick me up for the celebration dinner. Gosh I didn’t even have the chance to rest properly. I waited a while and he arrived, and we sped off to Sunway Pyramid. When I said “sped off”, I do really mean “sped off”. Phil the car-nut-freak drove at 170km/h. I was in the back seat looking at the speedometer almost going off the scale. Damn. Fortunately, we arrived in one piece and I began to irritate him with my trademark phrase - “If you drive slower, you’ll just arrive late. If you drive fast, you might not arrive”. And he wasn’t least bothered by it =_=”

Anyhow the dinner was held in Manhattan Fish Market. It was my first time there, and it was a pretty nice place I must say. The price is not exorbitant (unlike TGI Fridays) and the food was pretty good!

Grilled Catch of The Day with Veggie of the Day (I ordered Coleslaw but they didn’t have it. The veggie of the day isn’t that nice.)	Baked Fish with Classic Herbs (Or was it Garden Herbs?)
Caesar’s Salad	Salt and pepper which Phil used to attempt to murder me

After Phil finished his meal, he decided to silently murder me. When I turned to my back to speak to my friends, he poured salt and pepper onto my chips. The chips were so salty I wanted to stuff the salt dispenser up his @$$. Later when I turned to my back again, I came back to find my FISH tainted an insane amount of salt and pepper. It was bad enough when he did that to my chips, he even did that to my FISH!

Grrr.. I will have my revenge. Until the day all your hair fall off.