Bonnie & Clyde

Clyde surprised me with a bouquet of my favourite white flowers yesterday and took me hunting for the infamous restaurant serving all kinds of bones and ribs in Jalan Pudu, as recommended by a supplier. We couldn’t find it but however, we stumbled upon a gem instead. KL is full of surprises, innit?

We walked into this restaurant serving ‘mah lat for woh’, which is a popular ‘tongue-numbing’ spicy steamboat meal in Taiwan.

The restaurant was empty and so we ordered our food cautiously.


From top to bottom: Seaweed, paper thin mutton slices and mutton meatballs


From top left to bottom: Golden mushrooms, congealed pig blood and jelly fish. The dips from top to bottom: Sesame with peanut, peanut and fermented ‘fu yue’ (sorry, couldn’t find the right word for it)


Cooked pig brain

We ordered a combination of clear and spicy soup base for RM18. The ’mah lat’ soup was, as expected, tongue numbing with a lot of dried chillies. The clear soup was nice and I had a lot of that. Clyde was driven to tears as he wanted to show his jantaness by cooking his meat in the spicy soup. :P

The total bill came up to RM90+ for 2 person. It was a tad too pricey, but we were stuffed to the brim. I think 4 person would be ideal price wise. Aside from steamboat, they also offer a variety of interesting Taiwanese dishes.

In a nutshell, I would be patronising this place again and hopefully soon. *hint, hint*

Footnote: For noobie readers: Yes, Bonnie & Clyde are lovers of all suspicious-looking and weird-tasting food. But no exotic dishes for us, though.

Sometimes the happiest thing is not becuase of something you get, but because of the hapiness your love one have.

Getting older and supposedly wiser nowaday, I experience this more each day. Well, to me there's no harm, at least I got one more reason to feel happy.

I guess that explain my excitement with Bonnie's achievement.

Again, congratulations Bonnie. Your hard work is being regconized.

Thank you Jesus, for letting us to have such wonderful time in our lives.

Streamyx, Streamyx, Streamyx!

They claim I'm using a 2mb/s line. Thank you.

For the past 2 weeks, I'm downloading stuff at 7.6k/s!

I've got disappearedfrom the virtual world for almost 2 weeks. Who wants a connection that takes up to 7 minutes to load up a page of blog?

Thank you Streamyx.

Usually metal winners are just given a cert but this time a trophy is awarded, and a darn cool one too! It's in the shape of a giant white Lego piece that you can assemble together. I hope I can order a replica.


New design: Gone are the classic white certs with gold / silver / bronze hot stamping. The new certs looks very design-y with de-boss effect.

Fingers crossed, butterflies in my stomach, lump in my throat...

I didn’t hear a word of the speeches given by the 4 a’s chairman although I enjoyed the Creative Jury’s short speech wittily delivered by his agency’s tea lady.

I couldn’t eat.

I felt like throwing up.

I forced down a measly portion of the first course, skipped the sharks fin soup (but of course) and when the chicken dish came, I surrendered. I just couldn’t stomach the piece of chicken Kopilighter (my partner) put on my plate.

For some reason 4a’s jumbled up the awards give out. The category I was supposed to win in was listed the first, but some how it came 4th, I think. That was the longest 2 hours of my life.

Kopilighter kept walking in and out. When the emcee announced the TV category, I called him in, only to be surprised that it still wasn’t what we were waiting for.

When the calling finally came, I was stunned. Can’t believe this is happening to us! Our bosses sitting at the next table went “Go, go GO!!!”

I had to choose the longest winding path to the stage. Kopilighter was right behind me until he gave up and told me to follow him. Thoughts of falling down on stage, forgetting to shake the emcee’s hand and my pants ripping apart flooded my mind.

And so we went.

Twice.

The lights were blinding and Kopilighter kept rushing off the stage without posing for the photographer and I had to stop him. Bro, how are we going to be famous without being photographed?! :)

It was a pleasant surprise for a submission I almost forgot about. But I left Sunway Resort a very, VERY happy person. Surprisingly I didn’t party, but drove straight home, beaming from ear to ear, dying to show Clyde my winnings. Many thanks to my generous partner who agreed to let me have a first hand in hoarding the awards.

Kopilighter, here’s to many more. You’re simply awesome. Twinkle, twinkle, man!

Tomorrow is Malaysia’s prestigious annual advertising Nite Of The Mousedeer award show. Or in short, Kancil Nite.

Rumours are flying about like it’s going out of style. I don’t dare believe what I heard. At least until I see the tangible goods physically in my hands.

*crosses finger*

Our local dailies have been reporting the most absurd quotes from our ragbag collection of high and mighty quack politicians. If you have something to say and you want the entire nation to listen, please put in some effort not to appear foolish although intelligence is clearly not in your genes.

There are many, but this one takes the cake. I have to highlight this. I JUST HAVE TO. It’s stupidity at its’ best:

Someone said drug users should be “marooned on an island instead of allowing them the hotel-like luxuries at rehabilitation centres. Let them survive on the island's worms and moss.”

I mean, seriously guys.

This clearly shows the speaker’s lack compassion and empathy towards our own kind.

What happens if a person in a moment of weakness turns to vice for whatever reason? I am not a user myself but hey, it happens. Should they be scorned for all eternity and condemned to everlasting hell even before meeting their maker? Who are we to judge? Everybody sins. At this point, the speaker has already committed the cardinal sin of being judgemental and unforgiving before you can say “Syawal.”

Btw, isn’t November still the month of forgiveness?

Somebody hand me a migration form. Quick.

Attracted by the huge sign age that reads, “CRAB PROMOTION: RM1 PER KG”, me, Clyde and another couple friend ventured inside this new restaurant in Sunway Mas for a night of seafood binge.

First of all, the promotion is long gone and in it’s place, is a RM38 per kg priced crab dishes. Not attractive.

And their chiu pai (infamous) Black Pepper crab leaves much to be desired. Another crab dish we sampled was Salted Egg Crab. For the life of me, I can’t comprehend wth someone would actually add kunyit powder to make the whole dish yellowish when all they could do is add sufficient amount of duck eggs. Not attractive at all.

When all is done, I proceeded to the washroom to rinse my hands. On the door of the toilets were stuck a notice that went chink-chong-chink-chong. At least put an English sign la.

The ladies’ loo was locked and I used the men’s. It was one of those squatting type of toilet. After peeing, I flushed.

Like a civic-minded Malaysian, I flushed and looked back to ensure I flushed properly.

The entire content of the toilet rose up to the brim. Crapola was floating in there man. An all-brown community with friends and family. Particles of undigested food was swimming around. Like how Milo kaw sticks to the side of your mug every morning.

Suppose the loo was broken down since morning, there’s 8 hour worth of poo in there multiplied by... erm... say, 10 staff? And surely each staff will take a minutes off everyday to ponteng... I mean, answer nature’s call I assume there are 20 tables of 6 pax altogether in the restaurant and say, all tables were fully occupied either during lunch and dinner for a full day... excluding pee and assuming a quarter of the customers crapped after their meal and each person deposits 3lbs worth of crap, my calculations are as below:

10 staff x 3lb = 30lb
120 customers / 4 = 30 customers x 3lb = 90lb
30lb + 90lb = 120lb / 2.2 = 54.5kg.

That could only mean.... I SAW 54.5KG WORTH OF CRAP!!!

HOLY SHIT!!!

They come in the quantity of a pair.

They join our family when Bonnie moved in when we first wedded.

They are Bonnie's best friend when she felt insecure, especially during sleep time.

They provide comfort during Bonnie's every morning detoxification moment.

They both are named, individually, by Bonnie.

This twins are the ones that share our bed every night. Bonnie use them to form a "V" shape, covering her ears, as a protective shield against closet monsters in the night.

I have nothing against them as I've pretty much got use to the foursome relationship.

The only problem is, these two buggers followed Bonnie since like during centuries ago. They actually, according to Bonnie, contain the unique body aroma of their mistress.

(Ok, before I go further, lemme just decribe a little about them. Basically, they're two children pillows, aged, and with "minor" stain. The color? Imagine I secretly give them a nickname: old tyre)

This is not the problem too, actually. The main thing I might find myself struggling to learn is, Bonnie likes to, outta sudden, press these faithful friends of her onto my face; and insistI inhale as deep as I could.

Of course I did; I promise, as I know not doing so will cause hazards to my personal health. Well at least by inhaling, the damage to health isn't that great.

Luckily, this's not her idea of foreplay.

Also lucky enough, she's not using whip and handcuffs.

Guess I'm a lucky man after all.

Clyde says my sleeping pattern is weird.

I disagree.

I think I just had a traumatic childhood.

Ghosts and ghouls spooks me out. A spooky bedtime story will guarantee a night of eyes wide opened-ness. So in order to overcome that fear I needed “security” which comes in the form of a Bible / Crucifix / picture of Kuan Yin by my bedside. Yeah, those days I was a multi-religionist. :)

I always ensure my blanket covers me entirely, from the chin onwards. Feet mustn’t protrude as demons will always attack the toes first. And ears are vulnerable areas too so I need both my bantal busuk to cover them up. Can’t say I wasn’t a child with an overactive mind. Heh.

Without realising it, I exercised this ritual till now.

But there are exceptions. I mean, I don’t do this during outstation trips as i don’t bring along my bantal busuks with me everywhere. I’d like to think I am “flexible” when it comes to habits.

Nope, I am not dependant.

At all.

:P

One of the best things in life is that when you are tired, you know there is someone at home and be happy to see you back.

Bonnie thanks for your sms' :-)

The power of sms

Wednesday, 8 November 2006, 1.20pm marks the passing of Mdm Lim, beloved mother of my good friend, Chris.

Rest in peace and God bless.

I finally hauled my sorry ass to the gym after 2 solid months of loafing around. The excuse being my state of jet lag and a mini surgery in the southern region.

Yea, rite.

Needless to say, I was waaaaay out of shape. I only lasted 12 minutes on the treadmill, 5 minutes of level 5.5 brisk walking and 5 minutes of light jog at level 7.5. Brisk walking at 5.5 for 2 mins followed by 8 minutes of intense run at 9.0 x 2 reps was my norm. Even the free weights felt like gunny sacks of rice. Oh, the shame, the shame.

I punished myself for 60 minutes before dragging my battered body home. This morning I woke up to muscle aches most likely to last another day or two.

I can’t believe I’m actually paying for this. :P

I remember someone told me: Instead of changing your environment, we should change ourselves.

I’m talking about happiness here. We always look for external factor, or our surrounding environment, to help us to feel happy; but have we all forgotten that in the whole “happy” process, we are the final deciding factor?

The story from my last post is a mirror of ourselves, or the general behavior of the people today. We always try to change our environment to make us happy. We change our bank balance to bigger number, we change our surrounding people to our friends, we change our insecure environment to a secure home/house, etc. In short, we are trying to do everything to make things happen to our liking, the way we think is good.

But changing things to the way we believe is good doesn’t equals happy. There’s definitely nothing wrong about working hard and make our lives more comfortable and secure; what I’m saying is, these have nothing at all to do with happiness.

We feel happy because we feel happy. We don’t feel happy because we have just bought a nice car, or eat a great meal. All the external factors are just things that help to stimulate one of our emotion called happiness. They’re indirect, they just help, to make us feel happy. But in the end of the day, it’s all up to us to make ourselves happy.

Just like the fisherman, all he wanted is fish and all he needed to do is go fishing. Of course with the fairy’s tune, he could catch fishes easier but like all of us, he focus on the wrong thing. He focused on how to make the fairy play the tune instead of focusing on his fishes!

When we want to feel happy, we just start to feel happy. Of course it’s never easy to master it because most of us basically know too little about ourselves. Before we start to point finger at others, let us first understand this: If we cant even master and take control of our own selves, how can we control and change others?

Stop pointing fingers. Stop blaming others.

If something went wrong, the only persons we can ever blame is ourselves.

Vice verse, no matter what happen, the only thing that can make us happy is ourselves.

This is a lyric I love so much recently. For those who do not understand Chinese, just wanna share two verse with ya:

“Our heart is filled with more abundance than the world outside
Close our eyes and we shall see more than we saw.”

未到的春风经已吹到心中
未放的烟花经已得到观众
未试的新衫经已穿到街中
未过的一天经已感到鼓舞

传闻之中的将来
从天书翻出来
从心经敲出来
原来留在五内
祈求之中的将来
如最美丽恋爱
自从创世以来 飘于里海

原来你信有爱你就有爱
心思比世事应该更精彩
原来闭上双眼眼内满载
心花比铁树应该多灌溉

转角处异想天开
冥冥处更加可爱
看到处也是逢莱

未作的诗歌经已哼到心中
未说的秘密经已相信知道
未见得精灵经已为人祝福
未发生统统经已感觉得到


只要存在 不要问为何而来
逢莱未到亦逢莱
明白一天到达 一天会离开

There’s this story:

One day a fisherman was tiding his boat trying to catch some fishes from the pond. Suddenly he heard a wonderful music and he found that it’s from a fairy sitting near the pond playing with her flute. The even more wonderful thing was, with such music flowing in the air, fishes started to spring off the water and many of them fell into the fisherman’s boat. Within minutes the fisherman’s boat was full of fishes.

“That’s neat! If the fairy play her tune everyday, fishes would just jump into my boat and I would not need to work hard anymore!” The fisherman thought.

After he parked his boat, the fisherman approached the fairy.

“Can you play that tune again tomorrow?” The fisherman asked.

“I’m not sure. I can only play it when I am satisfy..”

“Then what can be done to make you satisfy?” Not giving up, the fisherman tried to find out what’s the cause of the fairy’s happiness.

“Only when I have some honey from the forest,” the fairy said.

“Alright, I will bring you some wild honey tomorrow and you will play that tune.”

The next morning the fisherman started his journey into the nearby forest. Being a person who earned his living from the water, he didn’t have a clue about forest and mountain; not to mention how to track down a bee hive. He walked the whole day and found nothing. Worse, when it started to get dark, he noticed he was lost. Hungry and thirsty, he kept walking in the forest without direction.

Finally he met a hunter in the forest who was about to go home. After listening to the fisherman, the hunter brought him to his little hut. They had dinner together while the hunter spent most of the night teaching the fisherman all useful skills and knowledge about surviving in the forest.

The next morning, after thanking the hunter, the fisherman continued his journey. By God’s grace, after searching half a day, the fisherman finally found a hive. The only problem now is, he didn’t, too, have a clue on how to collect honey from the bee hive. He stared at the hive for hours, pondering and trying to find a way to collect honey without being attacked by the bees. Finally, he decided to do it his own way; to cut down the hive and ran as fast as he could.

Obviously the plan didn’t work. 5 minutes later, the fisherman was lying on the ground with lumps all over his body; only without any honey. While he was moaning in his pain, the same hunter heard him and approached him once again. The hunter applied medicine onto the fisherman and gave him some honey he had just collected from the same hive the fisherman was trying to get.

Although feeling massive pain all over his body, the fisherman told himself at least his goal was accomplished. So he started to walk back to the pond where he met the fairy. When he reached there, it’s already dawn. The fisherman saw the fairy again though she somehow looked different. Without thinking much, the he passed the honey to her and the fairy happily took it and finished it.

When the fairy took the last sip of the honey, the fisherman politely asked whether she could play that tune again. “What tune? I was not even here before. This’s the first time I stop by this pond and, I cant play flute. Anyway thanks for your honey and bye,” the fairy said and quickly flew and varnish into the mist.

The fisherman fell onto the ground, thinking what he had been through and all his effort wasted, he started to cry loudly.

“Why are you crying? I thought you are going to get me some honey?”

The fisherman looked up and saw a fairy in front of him. It’s the same fairy whom he wanted to give his honey to. Showered with sorrow and disappointment, the fisherman told the fairy what happened. The fairy listened and then she started laughing.

“My dear fisherman friend, if fishes are all you wanted, with your net and your boat you should just get out there and fish! There’s no need for jungle tracking and honey collecting.”