skip to main |
skip to sidebar
My mobile phone rang when I just hopped on my bed, around 1230am. That's Kong's name showed on the phone display, this "early" in the morning? I wonder. I picked up the call with question marks in my head, "Already slept?", He asked. "About to", I answered. Then there was this wicked smile coming from him, suddenly the light bulb light up in my head, somehow I knew what's going. Of course I still ask whazzup at this late, we bullshit a bit but actually almost read each other's mind. Then he told me, just now when he went up stairs shower, saw a big parcel box on the living room table. I laughed in excitement and said: "Finally came?" Of course I can't wait to lay my hand on the "thing", but it was so late and I was kinda sleepy, so I just told him to hand over me tomorrow. "You don't want to open it together?" Kong asked in excitement, well.... Ahhh... finally the desire surpassed the sleepiness, "I'll bring it over now, wait for me ya", then Kong hung up, and I just went down stairs, and wait...
After unpacked the parcel, and there, 2 boxes.
Slide open the cover and the actual box shown.
About 3 weeks ago, when we were heading to bukit jalil for our swimming session, Kong asked me when I'm gonna buy it? Then I think a bit, and answered now kinda out of cash, coz chinese new year is coming, time to pay the roadtax, car installment, and others, money is pouring out like water, only out, nothing in. OK, OK, now you probably wondering, BUY WHAT?! Oh yeah, the one thing that I always talking about, a new mobile phone, the Nokia N73 Music Edition! I've been planning to buy this baby like, eerr... since 6 months ago, originally it was just the N73, then later they came out a Music Edition which is black in color, looks more stylist and cool! But pulling out around RM2K will instantly KO my financial status, which I don't really wanna do that. But I always have this idea in mind, how good if I can buy things by installment, and I told this to Kong that time, then he said there's an installment plan for that phone from Maybank credit card offer, and he's very interested, yupe, this guy has also been thinking to buy that baby about the same time I was. Well, I will be damned, I told myself that time.
Displaying both phone with accessories come with the phone. The green screen is the default theme, while the blue one was just set it by me.
Why izzit that hard to decide whether wanna buy it by installment or not? Most credit card does offer those 0% interest rate plan, but why still hesitate? Frankly, buying things with installment usually those Malay style, doing that myself will like grouping with them, make us feel like a ma chan!!
Side view of the phone.
Another front view.
Kong finally got here and brought the parcel along. Like little children excited over their presents, we started to take photos, talking craps, laugh like children and slowly get the phone out of the parcels, exploring it and so on...
Back view of the phone.
Finally I got myself a new gadget!
P/S: This post had been in the draft for 2 months, so now I just quickly ended it with conclusion, hahaha, kinda irresponsible huh?
After the company annual staff camp, we went back to KL on Saturday, and reached Damansara around 7pm. While journey back here, we had decided to try the Japanese style steamboat mentioned by Ryan, so, to the restaurant we went!The restaurant, known as Satsuma Shabu Shabu, is located at LG floor of Cineleisure, a cine-complex next to The Curve shopping mall. When approaching the restaurant, we stopped with hesitation, because there were no customer dinning inside! But since it's already decided, so we just walk in boldly, and greeted by the very cold air inside.
Its structure is similar to Sushi King or Genki Sushi, where foods are rotated along a conveyor belt, the difference is, they are mostly raw food, for your steamboat. And the table has several cooking stove, each for a single customer. So basically the idea is, you order a set of steamboat material from the menu, cook at your own stove, and get any extra food you like from the conveyor belt. It has 4 varieties of soup to choose from, Dashi, according to the waiter, this is a plain soup with little seasoning and taste, Miso, Kimchi and Sukiyaki, which is a soup with sweet taste, kinda taste like Teriyaki.
Beef set (around RM23++)
Seafood set (around RM20++)
Chicken set (around RM15++)
So I ordered a beef set, and chosen the miso soup. Our soups came first, and we turned on our own stove, with the switches at the side of the table, and started to boil them. Then each of our order came and we started to chow down the food! Only now we realized why it was so cold when we came, apparently the air condition was set to a low temperature so that when people started to steamboat, everyone won't feel so hot.
Miso soup
Kimchi soup
Sukiyaki soup
My beef set had around 5 slices of beef, 2 tofus, 2 types of mushroom, and some vegetable. It's not much, but still able to get my stomach full. The conveyor belt item priced at RM1.90, RM2.90, RM3.90 and RM4.90 if I'm not mistaken, the cheapest of course are those vegetable stuffs, meat is the most expensive. The longer I eat, the more salty the miso soup becomes! Should have chosen the dashi instead. Our kimchi soup was also getting spicier.
The food and price are still OK if you wanna have a small steamboat meal with friends. The shabu shabu style is quite popular in Japan and I think most of us teenagers will like it.
The cheating coupon!
One thing to mention, when entering the parking lot, we were given a coupon that suppose to have 20% discount on every conveyor belt item. We ordered 3 of it, and also showed them the coupon when paying, but somehow we just didn't get the discount as stated, dang, what kind of dirty trick is this? I don't really mind the 20%, but if you don't plan to give that discount, please don't even show them. What a cheap cheating tactic!
The night we arrived Penang for the company boot camp, we went to Bukit Tambun to have our dinner. This place is famous for its cheap seafood in the Penang area, heard lots of people talking about it, but never tried before. According to those that went before, the food still quite good consider its price range at this level.
Right after turn into the Bukit Tambun entrance, passed the toll, turn right after the first junction, then go straight until end of the road, it's quite straight forward. We arrived at a harbor like restaurant, it's already crowded with people, and we had to parallel parked our cars.
All 7 of us already starving, so we quickly place order, for,
1) Fried sotong (squid),
2) Gung bou lai liu har (1 kind of spicy prawn),
3) Spicy zuk tan (1 kind of clam),
4) Steam pou yu (stingray)
5) Spicy crab and a
6) Vegetable
Left: Gai lan (vege); Middle: Gung bou lai liu har; Right: Spicy zuk tan
The food came quite fast, and the quantity was large enough for 7 people. The fish was very fresh, coz you can taste the natural sweetness of the meat, and it doesn't stink. But the prawn was not that good, not really crunchy anymore when served, and so was the crabs, they were too skinny, little meat and it was sticking to the shell, not fresh perhaps? Other dishes were not bad.
The stingray!
And how much all of these cost? RM117+, inclusive rice and drinks. From my experience, it's quite cheap provided you have that many dishes and quantity. We were all expecting around RM150+, but turned out that price instead, a good deal indeed!
P/S: According to CY, which I call him the "Gourmet" (coz he knows lots of good eating places!), we can actually order fried soft shell crab in the restaurant, but not sure whether it's seasonal, dang, missed it!
Last Thursday and Friday was the company Annual Staff Camp, or so called Team Building Camp, but I rather call it as the company boot camp.
We moved out on Wednesday evening, around 5pm, after our lunch, thanks to those nasty bugs and patches we needed to finish before departure. This is my 2nd time driving to Penang, all 5 of us packed inside my little baby, while our bags fully stuffed into the small boot of my car.Driving at 90-110km/h, and keeping those reminders as told by bro Loong last time when we went to Penang in mind, like take notice of the speed limit, be careful of those bright places, speed trap usually there, and other funny funny but useful tips, the journey was still OK. Just that occasionally, my windshield will have "piat" sound, looks like bird droppings splashed on it... duuuhh... because it's already dark, couldn't see it clearly, so I just assume they were bird droppings. But it turns out that those were insects! And my front bumper had insect corpses sticked on them everywhere! Oh man, what a good time for kamekaze suicide!
This is no bird shit, it's insects!
Half way along the journey, we already called Ryan and Darren, two of our Penang branch colleagues, to bring us to Bukit Tambun, for a big seafood dinner feast! We arrived there around 830pm, ate till almost 10pm, then went for the next stop, Batu Feringgi! This is my favorite place, not because of its cheap *ahem* stuffs, but the road structure, you need to drive quite long distance uphill, and those twists and turns along the way, wow, really testing your driving skill and having an near drifting experience!
We were being arranged to stay at the YMCA hostel, coz most of our activities will be held in the rented meeting board room there. The room is just like standard hotel room, 3 beds, air cond, hot water, TV, well, not bad.
The first day of the camp, we was having some outdoor team building games at the Kebun Bunga park in the morning. And noon we had a debate event, where we were separated into 2 teams, and debate over 2 topics. Then at last the problem sharing session, where we wrote down problems that the company facing and suggested solutions. All meals were provided. Not very fun, but still some quite good activities.
The 2nd day had some topics discussion, a 1 1/2 talk on "Managing Yourself", and some indoor activities, I can't deny that sometimes it's quite boring. We ended up earlier than yesterday, so this time, we finally had time to go out around Penang.
After dinner, we went back our room, rest and shower, then to Halo Cafe in Bayan Lepas, just few lots next to our office. It was totally crowded, we waited a while to get a place to sit down, but our orders were processed quite slow, sat there around 1 hour only get our drinks, it was just too many people! The singers were OK, I still prefer the Halo Cafe in Connaught we always go more!
The next day, Saturday morning, we went out to eat some local Penang food, bought some Him Heang biscuits, then drove to the Kek Lok Temple, because this is Har lui, one of my colleague first time in Penang! It's really not fun touring around under that burning sun!
We departed Penang around 325pm, and back in Damansara near 7pm, had our dinner at The Curve, a restaurant known as Satsuma Shabu Shabu, a japanese style steamboat meal. Then I had to drive all of them home one by one, from the nearest Damansara till Jingjang, Selayang! My eyes were already damn tired and blurred when arrived home!
Super saiyan, Naruto, and Cloud Strife, what are they in common? Apart from strong and powerful, yupe, they all have yellow colored hair, and I have just joined their club!
Yeah, I've dyed my hair today, not till as yellowish as Naruto, but it's still quite brownish toward golden color, with some highlights.
OK, OK, what's wrong with me you would ask? Have been thinking to dye it quite a while, ever since working and frequently cracking my brain, grey and white has been invading my hair color. I'm not a fashionable person before, but now I'm willing to make a change to my outlook, dyeing hair is part of it, not to mention it can hide away those grey and white spots in your hair.
Went to the Wood Saloon as usual, after came back from half day work and lunch. It's damn crowded with people, people who came here dyeing their hair, rebonding, change of style, because Chinese New Year is around the corner, everyone is putting an effort to change their hair style for this festive season. Waited around 2 hours to get my turn, as usual, wash and cut. I always thought that dyeing hair would take like 2 hours and more, I'm really not a patient person and Yen Han was with me too, so dyeing hair was not really in my mind, until the stylist told me, for guy, it just required around 15 minutes. Ahh, what the hell, just do it! So I started to choose color, was thinking to dye a darker color, nothing fancy and moderate, then how about doing some highlighting? So I just asked the stylist, Brenda's opinion. She's chosen 2 colors and I just said go ahead with them. Hahaha, beautiful women always has this advantage, irresistible persuasion! It took me around half an hour more for the dyeing process to complete, poor Yen Han just waited like crazy.
So, what's the result of this brave attempt?
Surprised, shocked, regret! OK, OK, sounds too over. I admit I do regret when I saw the color, it's almost a gangster style, la la zai, the bad boy figure, which I believe it's kinda out of trend now. But they did a great job, even and properly colored, but I'm not really sure it's gold based and brown highlighted, or vice versa? But I think this change of color does attract unnecessary "attention", which I do not wish for.
Sigh, I'm gonna have to stuck with this for around 3 or 4 months, or more, so I better get use to it. Hope this doesn't have any impact towards what people think of me! Hahaha!
Did my 15K mileage car service this Monday, oh, correction, it's already 18K when I went for service, because I always late for every car services, accumulated till now, it's approximately 3K over the actual service mileage, hahaha!
Of course, this time I was late again, by the time I realized, it's already almost 500KM over the stated mileage. Did the first 3 free workmanship services at Perodua Service Center, and this is the 4th, which I will be charged, so was thinking to change to another workshop for service, mostly because I prefer to be able to observe what the mechanic is doing, which I can't if it's the Perodua SC I used to go, and the ridiculous booking ahead, a 2 weeks early if you wanna do it on weekends.
But in the end, I went back to P2 SC, partly due to neither me nor the guys know any good workshop around, and the car is still under warranty, so better do it with P2. So I've no choice to book on Monday because I need to drive to Penang next week, can't wait for another week so that I can service on weekends. Going to work a bit late shouldn't be a problem.
But I'm definitely not gonna use cheap Perodua engine oil to feed my baby this time. Chean is using Q8 for his Kelisa, which is a quite famous brand and recommended by some car forums. But the performance degraded after 2 months usage, according to him. So I was thinking to go for another recommended brand, Motul. So I went to dig some forums, and thanks to Chean, I was able to find out that Motul has an entry level fully synthetic engine oil, Motul H-Tech 100 Plus, which the price is reasonable and affordable for me. But where to buy? Previously, Chean dug out something from a forum, it was about a workshop helped to tune a Kelisa and won a racing event, and the engine oil they were using is Motul, and it's also part of the reason I've decided to try this engine oil. The workshop is known as Trial, and coincidentally it's near Chean's place! After some findings, Trial also a distributor for Motul engine oil, so, need to say more?
We went to Trial on Saturday, before our swimming session. The people there are quite friendly, we talked a bit on engine oil and other stuffs. I got my Motul H-Tech Plus for RM140, well, a bit higher from what stated in the forum, but still acceptable. Hhmm, probably next time can come here for service.
I was right on time for the service, 850am, on Monday. But after registered, I was told that only 10am+ I can get my car, dang! So I explicitly sit outside, and watched them doing my car service, from far. They really had taken their own sweet time and I only able to leave that place around 1020am. When I walked to my car, I was like WTF!!?? My hood was not closed properly, some engine oil spilled on top of it, some white substance near my wiper, get into the car, the paper they used to protect my car mat when they were working was still there, dammit, they had done a really bad job and poor service, I will think twice to go back there again!!
So, after almost 1 week on Motul H-Tech 100 Plus, the verdict?
Probably it's just my imagination, probably it's the effect of after car service (changed engine oil, etc), probably that's how it goes with fully synthetic oil, here are the differences I felt:
- Improved engine kick in, eerrr, OK, OK, I have no idea what's engine kick it, just that my baby can pick up faster, can push up speed faster.
- Smooth, engine sounds smoother, this probably due to change of engine oil, not limited to Motul.
- Improved fuel consumption, eerrr.. lower I mean, it's so coincident that my fuel empty signal was blinking after service, so I pumped full tank. Looks like it's quite fuel saving.
Overall, I'm satisfied, what more can you expect?
There's a shop lot down stairs, next to the shop beneath my office, previously was deserted, and starting to have renovation few weeks back. It was really a painful experience for tenants surrounding it, due to the continuous drilling and hammering.
After 2 weeks of suffering, things got cool down, and the shop finally reveal its identity. It turns out to be a noodle shop, selling mostly pan mee, known as Face to Face Noodle House Promotion banners started to hang outside the shop, and the attracting part is, on the opening first day, each mee sells at RM1 per bowl, and on the second day each for RM2! Talking about marketing tactics, this one at its best!
And today is its grand openning day, RM1 per bowl of mee, stingy people like me sure go and check it out!
The magical banner.
Still has some renovation going on.
Front view inside.
Back view inside.
All sort of chilies and seasoning with your pan mee.
Lok mei, with cincau?! This is odd, cincau taste covers the herb taste, and it's too weak, taste not strong enough, put too much water to cut down cost maybe?
Normal dried pan mee, with egg?
Normal soup pan mee, with egg too...
And my order, special pan mee! The fried thingy looks like fried pig intestines to me, but not really taste like it, fried fu zuk? Not really, Forgot the check out menu what is it, but it's crunchy and taste good! (Updated, the fried thingy is actually fried fish cake!)
When we left, it's already crowded and people are waiting to get served. Fortunately we went there early!
Bottom line, the food is not bad, with price of RM4.30-5.00, its size and toppings are up to the price. Drinks cost you around RM1.80-2.50 if I'm not mistaken, which is quite standard. My current personal favorite is the one I ordered just now, gonna try other taste next time, and the variety of chilies are a bless to spicy lover!
Updated at 5:30pm:
Guess what, we just went to the noodle house and have another bowl of cheap RM1 pan mee! Wahahaha! This time ate a dried pan mee, with pork and fried fish cake, with the dried chili, it sure taste good! Well, tomorrow will go there again, RM2 per bowl pan mee, anyone?
Train? What train, the train of cars of course!
Monday is known to be traffic jam day, the reason? I dunno, probably tired weekend, everyone wakes up late, craps, just everyone coincidentally ended up going to office about the same time, thus, choking the traffics.
I was dragging my tired body and drove to work this morning, but right after my car went down the slope and reaching the end, train of cars! Thanks to the useless traffic light at the end of the road leading to the main road! It's really becoming worse since the toll down there hiked the fee, because my housing area happens to be an alternative to avoid paying toll! Ironically, it took me around 15 minutes just to get out of my own place!
As usual, traffic jam again at East-Wesk Link right after the Connaught toll, although not the worst but it's bad enough to waste lots of my life there. Frankly, anything leads to the Federal Highway in the morning is a mess, guaranteed jam for you!
And there's the jam again in SPRINT Highway, this one of course caused by the exit towards Phileo Damansara and SS17, well, and also because it's an alternative road to avoid the SPRINT highway toll too, bad design indeed. Don't even try to drive here, toward the Damansara direction, when it's off office hour on weekdays, the jam always amaze me when I driving home in the opposite direction.
Another nice way to start a new week and day, rite?
Aahh.. had a rough weekend, sleepy and tired, see if I had time to talk about it later.
Just came back from my mum side relative wedding dinner, at the Nikko Hotel. As you know wedding dinner is a very profitable business, with so many competitors, these restaurants, hotels, are always putting in new ideas in their wedding packages.
In recent years, there's an idea, a new wedding dinner trend emerges out of no where and quickly adapted by almost all restaurants as well as hotels, probably people likes it, probably it's a way to show how in style, how good your dinner is, I dunno - It is, the first dish ritual/ceremony. Nowadays, the first dish of a wedding dinner is presented in a royal style, where by ceremonial music, along with dim light and spot light focusing, food is brought out by waiters/waitresses, wearing smart and formal attires, sometimes with chinese traditional costumes, in a well practiced sequence and order. Frankly, sometimes I really can't help myself and laugh out when I saw it presented in an overly manner. Like it or not, everyone is doing it, "That guy did that, why shouldn't I?" Probably that's why it's spreading like wild fire.
Anyway, other than that, service is getting better. What I mean getting better here is, food is served, and also divided for you, the server changes your dirty plate, fill up your drinks, lay the dining cloth for you, serve each dish to your plate, etc... All these, it's just like a meal for the disability/cripple, we are served until we don't really need to do anything, except open our mouth and eat (err.. almost, you still have to use your hand to delivery the food to your mouth). The cripple meal, which I got it from some TVB dramas dialog, best describe this odd wedding dinner trend...
Setting up a SLI system has always been most gamers' dream, ever since the original version 3dfx Voodoo series. After nVidia acquires 3dfx, they recreate this dream a couple of years back in their famous GeForce line graphic card.
Eerrr.. what's a SLI? Simply put, it's just a technology to let user uses 2 similar graphic cards as 1. Imagine having 2 engines in a car, how fast can this baby goes? Hahaha! Wouldn't it be expensive? Yupe, like everything else in the world, this is just another using money to buy time/performance idea, a luxury toy, that's why I call it a dream in the first place.
When I bought my rig around 2 years ago, I already have this idea to setup a SLI, of course I'm that loaded, couldn't straight get 2 graphic cards in 1 go, but the system specs were definitely toward this idea. The card I bought is Leadtek Winfast PX6600 GT TDH, best affordable mid range card at that time. Around 2 years later, I got myself another one, second hand, which cost almost 4 times cheaper when I first bought it. Sigh, everyday things obsolete, and computer stuffs are the most significant of them.
I got the other card plugged in, and connected them with the SLI bridge. After booted into Windows, it detected the extra card and setting up the driver, but when I tried to go in the Display properties, it doesn't show any SLI thingy, that's odd. A quick check to the motherboard manual, found out that I need to adjust some jumpers so enable it, hahaha, should have check thoroughly first.
SLI in da house!
Notice the copper fan underneath the graphic card, that's the troublesome heatsink fan.
After restarted, things seem to be in order now, there's a SLI menu to enable the setup, so far so good. Now of course time to test out the performance, I loaded up 3DMark05, a 3D graphic benchmarking program, and proceed to the tests. Wow, the frame rate showed almost 80% increment, which is really good! And when I was excited and satisfied with the result, suddenly a "beep beep beep" sound snapped me awake. It was from my motherboard, sound like this usually means there's something wrong with your hardware. I quickly canceled the test and jump back to Windows, and the screen was showing my motherboard chipset, the nForce 4 SLI, having a whopping temperature of 71 degrees celcius!!
Previously the heatsink fan on this chip was dead, and I had to replace it with another one as recommended in the motherboard forum. The temperature after I installed the new heatsink fan was not much different with the dead one. Now it proves I did a bad job installing it. The heatsink is not really designed for the motherboard so it's kinda loose. Sigh, now I had to redo the whole process again, and this involves taking out the motherboard from the case, remove the heatsink, clean it and attach it again, which is damn troublesome!!
This time I stick the thing in a different position, which seems quite secure even after the graphic card plugged in above it. The temperature monitor shows a figure of around 60 degrees, good, acceptable temperature after CPU overclocked and SLI enabled.
Finally I can proceed to test my baby in action! Here's some result I've got:
How many people has the chance to setup a SLI? Most of them just thinking better upgrade to a better card instead of spend more on obsolete model. But frankly, it's really cool when seeing 2 cards in action, I've experienced it, I've done it, and that's what matters.
