Here's My Story

This chicken rice stall is within the shop Restoran Yat Yeh Hing, which is at the corner of the row of shophouses opposite St. Ignatius Church, off LDP. Ban's mum had recommended this to me but there wasn't opportunity to try it previously because it doesn't open for dinner. Mon - Sat lunch is at the chap fan shop whereas Sunday lunch is usually at the Curve after yoga class. However, the chance came when for a reason already forgotten, I skipped yoga class. So Ban and I headed over to this shop. We were lucky because it was already quite late (nearly 1.30pm) and so it wasn't very crowded (managed to get the table on the outer edge) and yet there was still food. Otherwise, normally it's crowded and oftentimes you'll need to wait a little while to get a table. The chicken rice turned out to be mediocre. For its price (think it was like RM6), I rather eat at New Ipoh Chicken Rice Restaurant @Damansara Jaya and Ban would be happy just to have the roasted c...

Dad: Can you check Air Asia ticket on Jan 7, 8 and 9? Look for flight from 10am onward and tell me the cheapest one. Me: Okie. (Later, I texted him, saying that the cheapest ticket is on Jan 8, 11.05am, costing RM39. He texted me back asking me to get it. Yet, later he called...) Dad: You got my sms? Me: Yes, to go ahead and get the Jan 8 ticket. Dad: Yes, the RM39 one. How about Jan 7? Is it cheaper? Me: You asked me to check Jan 7, 8 and 9 and for flight from 10am onward. Then choose the cheapest, right? Jan 8, 11.05am is the cheapest. Dad: Is Jan 7 cheaper? Me: Huh? Jan 8 is the cheapest. It's RM77 on Jan 7. You want it? Dad: Oh, no no. Get Jan 8. Me: @@

Food is generally much cheaper in Butterworth when compared to KL, PJ or even Seremban. So let's look at this example: This chap fan cost RM6.40. It has fish, fish that is stingray, curry dish (from my experience, curry dish is a premium dish), two pieces of the fish I rarely choose fish for chap fan and so I can't tell for sure whether this is cheap, normal or expensive. What do you think? Incidentally, the fish is dry. What a waste of stingray. I wouldn't have it again at that shop.

Cracked me up when I saw this on my recent trip to Singapore:

"I'm sorry," I said. Regret.  "I didn't mean to offend you." "Don't show me humility unless you mean it," she said, still looking me over with narrow eyes. "Even when you make your face a mask, your eyes are like glittering windows." "I am sorry," I said earnestly. Apology . "I'd hope to make a good first impression." "Why?" she asked. "I would rather you thought well of me." "I would rather have reason to think well of you." Conversation between Kvothe and Vashet in "The Wise Man's Fear" by Patrick Rothfuss

It's been an unsual past one week or so. This is mainly due to my mum being hospitalised. She was scheduled for a normal surgery to treat her sinus but the surgery ended with complication. Something about blood flowing backward and so she couldn't breathe. Scary. Much later, it was also revealed that her throat was inflamed and so that didn't helping with her breathing either. She was admitted to ICU for nearly a week before being transferred to normal ward for a few days. That period was frightening as there were a couple of episodes of non-breathing, which later traced to her biting the oxygen tube. During those incidents, I observed that she appeared to be having nightmare (she was asleep most of the times during the initial stay in the ICU) and clenching her teeth (and thus biting the tube). The nurses then inserted something to prevent that. From then onward, it was progress. Phew. As for work, a year-end valuation project will start very soon. The bad news is th...

It seems that this shop is famous for its soya sauce chicken rice/noodle but for me it's always the place to have the best dumpling noodle since I was introduced to this shop about 10 years ago. Please note that there are 3 shops with the same name: 2 of them (one airconditioned, one not) are side by side and are at the beginning/start of the row of shophouses whereas the 3rd one is a few doors away i.e. somewhere in the middle of the row. I only go to the former. Since the the hotel we stayed  was in the same row, I made a point to have lunch there before we left Singapore. Ban didn't come as food there were definitely not to his liking. The dumpling noodle still cost the same all these years i.e. SGD 3. Amazing. There were 7 or 8 pieces of dumpling (sorry, can't remember now), which was either the same or one less than it used to. However, I suspect they were smaller. Not sure. The taste was about the same, with distinctive taste of waterchestnut within it. ...

For my recent Singapore trip with Ban, we decided to stay at a hotel as we couldn't really find accommodation at friends' place. As a result, we didn't stay as long as I would like to. After much research (chiefly over Agoda and TripAdvisor), we decided on Bliss Hotel for 3 main reasons: clean room (from guests' review), free wifi connection (paramount importance for Ban) and easy access to MRT station (just across Chinatown MRT station). It cost SGD87.45 per person, after discount and including taxes. The hotel was less than a year old and looked modern. The decoration was simple but tastefully done in a modern way. Room could be considered a little small by some but we didn't care about the size. I just wanted comfortable bed, shower and electrical items that work, and clean room. Ban just wanted a wifi :P All these were there. What a relief. There were a few tv channels, the wifi was fast, 2 bottles of mineral water and sachet o...

I love this song. It's refreshing. Its music is 'clean' in a sea of rather noisy songs nowadays. Almost "a capella".

Sushi Tei crab , originally uploaded by Jaded Jeremy . Yes, it was really hairy lol. I wouldn't normally order crab because it takes too much effort to dig out its flesh. Too much for too little. However, to my surprise, on that day, Ban decided (on his own! wahhhhhh) to try something totally new and out there. So he ordered this from their (presumedly) seasonable menu. As you can tell (look at the spoon), it was a pretty small crab. Its legs, however, were meaty enough to warrant the effort. Unfortunately, there were sharp thorn-like shell on its legs. It was appropriately 'slashed' at several places when served to us. However, it would have been better if they had provided the cracker too so that we could better handle the sharp legs. The digging utensil was very useful. Its meat was sweet and refreshing. Clean and delicious - something that both Ban and I appreciated. We don't think we'll have it again although it was delicious. It just took too much effort a...

So following on from my encounter at Digital Mall , I decided to order online but before that, I called Dell to ask whether I could get CDs for the OS and Office. Yes to the former but no to the latter. Well, in that case, I postponed the purchase of Office as surely I could get cheaper price at Digital Mall, right? I opted for the highest spec of Alienware 14. I didn't add anything else except to extend the warranty to 3 years. First problem I ran into was a call from Dell to perform some "verification". They kept asking me for my office phone number and e-mail. I told them that I had none of these and that my laptop was my office (being a part-time consultant). I suspected that these questions arose because the delivery address was different to my credit card's billing address, which I did provide as part of the verification. Luckily, nothing was amiss after that call. I was a little anxious when unboxing the laptop. I had heard people receiving defective Alie...

Five weeks after I urged a boycott of Yahoo Mail , they introduced a new feature 'Recent' that basically allows you to view, in a vertical list, the recent e-mails. You can also delete the ones that you are not interested in. In this way, once again, I can multi-task between e-mails, an adequate a substitute for the e-mail tab function that was removed from the previous version . I don't know whether it is better or worse but it's good enough for me. It's a relief because I tried using other alternatives. I had two problems: mapping of Yahoo Mail folders and setting up my work e-mail. There doesn't seem to be an alternative free e-mail programme that can do both. Theoretically, Thunderbird could but I couldn't get it to recognise my work e-mail setting. Weird. Someone who set up petition for bringing back the old version managed to meet some Yahoo's personnel. They admitted to releasing the new version when it wasn't ready e.g. the Recent ...

One day, instead of choosing one of the usual suspects, I decided to try their chicken lasagna. I do like lasagna once a while. Like pizza, I can't eat such food frequently. 'Jelak' (still don't know what's the English word for it). Probably because of too much cheese. From the first few bites, I find it tasty. Ok, maybe hunger helped a bit :) It was tasty but later I noticed that the meat was a little drier than other lasagnas that I had. Maybe it had less oil? It was certainly not oily, unlike some lasagnas. Or maybe it was baked longer than usual. The meat consistency is similar to that of Nyonya chang . I probably wouldn't try it again because I got 'jelak' (bored? *shrug*) of it halfway through. Besides, there's a list of usual suspects to choose from at Rosemary Bites :)

One day, Ban, his brother and I went to Paradigm Mall to have dinner at Sushi Q . Unfortunately, there was no more salmon sushi at the counter. So we went to look for alternative. Fortunately we didn't need to go far as opposite Sushi Q was Daore Express, a Korean eatery which we had not tried. That fulfilled my once-a-week-try-new-food objective :) Ban and his brother had this Korean canned sweet rice drink. Yes, it was sweet but not any sweeter than your typical Yeo's canned drinks. It was refreshing and tasted a little like barley. Ban's brother also had another canned drink that supposed to be cinnamon and persimmon drink. However, it had only the former and sugar taste only. The persimmon taste was sorely lacking. I ordered the Janki Goksu that also came with 3 side dishes. The soup was quite clear and not oily, and had simple flavour. The noodle itself was like mee sua (soy noodle). Interesting. In my opinion, ramen and udon taste better. As for the ...

After my first attempt , I didn't do much because I was in Singapore. Once back in KL, I researched more online, specifically the review of gaming laptops and also users' comments. The tricky part was that some of the laptops I looked at online were simply not available in Malaysia (at the moment). More importantly, I had to consider the level of after-sales service and support locally. In the end, I decided on Dell's laptop, not because Dell had glowing testimonies all around but because it's the least problematic (in terms of after-sale service and support) among the lot. Not comforting, isn't it? Dell website didn't allow me to opt for Windows 7 instead of Windows 8. I had heard horrendous remarks about the latter. Moreover, it wasn't clear whether they would include the OS's DVD. Similar question about Microsoft Office if I choose to purchase from them. I remember a friend managed to customise all these at a retail store. So I went to Digital...

Once a while, especially when Ban sees my attire lying around (which is rare), he'll dress up SBB, such as these: I laughed when I first saw these. Not sure about the singlet but the swimming gear looked cool on SBB, don't you think? :)

Remember the workaround I highlighted before? No longer works. Despite nearly a month has passed, Yahoo has not moved forward to where it used to be (hehehe convoluted, isn't it?). There are still plenty of problems with it (e.g. no 'Print' button!) and that include the absence of the all-important e-mail tabs. Plenty of users have complained in Yahoo's official feedback website:  https://yahoo.uservoice.com/forums/210695-yahoo-mail/suggestions/4546058-please-bring-back-tabs#{toggle_previous_statuses} Yahoo's response thus far is laughable and shows that they either don't use Yahoo Mail itself or they're not power users or they don't know how to emphatise or they simply don't care. Meanwhile, I urge everyone to stop using Yahoo Mail. If you don't have one, don't start one.

Few years ago, when I experienced difficulty playing some games on my current laptop (for some, I couldn't do anything once the game started!), I wanted to get a new one but that was low in my priority of expenditure, given my limited income and money. So I planned to do so after selling the house in Seremban. As time went on, my laptop's performance deteriorated gradually. For example, it takes a good 10 minutes from start up to stabilising at desktop. Then another 5 minutes to start up Excel (I regularly use spreadsheets) and then another 5 minutes to just open an Excel file. Similar starting up issue with web browser. However, it gets easier later in the day after the first start up. At the end of the day, it takes 10 minutes to shut down. Every few months, the blue screen of death emerges. As expected, meanwhile, there are more and more games my laptop can't handle e.g. Civilisation 5, Path of Exile, Dragon Age. Even the game I currently play, Rift, gets laggy and ...

I have these particular contradicting traits.  Without a concerted effort to do so, I'm inclined not to go out and socialise. Lazy? Maybe. I noticed that this is more so if I am the one organising the meeting/catch-up. I guess this is where the planner trait comes in: the more people involved, the harder it is to organise and thus more stressful. The same applies when I'm networking or attend work-related meetings. However, this is where it gets a little strange: if I do socialise, often than not I end up enjoying it. Games with friends, laughter, gossip etc. As for work-related meeting, usually it'll end up well with clients feeling at least satisfied with my work and speaking warmly with me. In short: positive benefits most of the time. Ok, friends and family, you can tell me otherwise if you wish by leaving your comments at the end :) So, knowing this, I usually force myself to agree to meet friends and family even if I don't feel like it (yes, there are t...

Ban and I ate at Sushi Q the first time a few years back when they were still new at One U. We quite liked it. It was not really a proper Japanese restaurant. It has packed Japanese food in (presumably) chilled counter where you could peruse and then purchase to eat at a table there if you wish. Soy sauce and wasabi were provided for free but not drinks though, which I tried not to purchase. Sometimes I shared drinks with Ban because it was expensive, given its austere place. Somehow we didn't eat there regularly. A few reasons: we usually don't go to One U because of the hassle to find carpark space. Secondly, when we meet with friends for meals at One U, we end up at a proper restaurant where we can sit and chat for a while. Sushi Q is hardly such place to do this. Now with Paradigm Mall so near to us, there is even less reason to go to One U. Fortunately, there's a branch of Sushi Q over there. It serves the same food the same way except that it also serves ramen a...

I read a number of (positive) parenting articles about helping children understand anger and that it's normal to be angry. What's crucial, however, is how one deals with it It may surprise some people, especially people not close to me, that I'm naturally hot-tempered. I learned long ago that if I react to it by shouting or get into an argument with angry words with someone, inevitably I will feel guilty about it later. What bites me especially the most is that sometimes I believed that person deserves it and I hate it that I feel guilty about it. However, later I found more important reasons not to react while angry: it could have even worse consequences e.g. exacerbate misunderstanding, being defensive even though I was in the wrong, things/relationships destroyed etc. So I learn not to say much when I'm angry because if I should talk, it will likely result in a tirade and raised voice in anger. I'll be quiet and focus on something else. I still need to reme...

A year ago, I blogged about what the minimum standard I set for salmon sushi by using Kinpachi as a yardstick. Recently, Ban and I went back there again to celebrate our 4th anniversary. The salmon sushi (RM8) was not bad but its rice crumbled easily. Yes, the price is steep but as I blogged before, it's difficult to get good salmon sushi here - posh place or not. The ama ebi sushi (RM18) was quite large, firm and juicy. One of the best I had thus far. Their cawanmushi  could be softer. Its texture was no different than a normal steam egg. The restaurant's waitresses were attentive and regularly checked on us to refill our green tea even though we were seated at a small table in the corner. At first, we were seated in a small room (with only 2 tables) that was reserved for non-smokers but we couldn't stand the people on the other table where the lady kept up with her tongue lashing of her grown-up son. Sharp voice, sharp words *shiver*. We requested to chan...

Jambu air, or rose apple, is one of my favourite fruits. Unfortunately, firstly, it's difficult to get, and secondly, they're seldom sweet nowadays. In fact, on my recent trip to Penang (drove), I purposely made a couple of stops at rest area to get the supposedly jambu madu air (honeyed version), which I had before. To my disappointment, out of about maybe 12 - 14 half pieces (cut pieces) in a packet, only 1 or 2 are truly sweet. The rest are juicy but bland or mildly sweet. To my surprise, I saw a tree full of these fruits outside a house near Ban's place (see below). There were many bunches or them and some looked ripe. I thought they could only grow in cool weather and I assure you that KL is anything but cool.

Remember the new Yahoo Mail  back in August 2013? I loved its feature that allowed user to open e-mails in tabs. However, early this October, they changed yet again and this time they had gone backward without a doubt - they had removed the e-mail tab feature! How silly! Here's a quick fix solution by "Samy" (someone's username): Here's the tip of the day to get back the previous version of yahoo mail: Once you are logged, you would have an url similar to the following: https://####.mail.yahoo.com/neo/launch?.rand=##### (the ## are different for each users and sessions) If you replace 'launch? ..', by 'search' as follow: https://####.mail.yahoo.com/neo/search You should get the older, working version. It really works but I don't know for how much longer.

Recently, I've been getting increasingly frustrated with my 6-year old laptop. Crashing once in a few hours in MMORPG like Rift could be excused but Chrome loading slower than usual? That's terrible. Excel's taking 5 minutes to start up? Goodness. It was by chance I read this article: " Top tips to a faster PC " by Britta O'Boyle on Yahoo News. In summary, the tips are: Regularly clean up your hard drive Keep on top of updates Clean the air grilles Clean the registry regularly Switch to Windows 8 Add more RAM Switch to Solid State Drives No. 2 is not a problem. Most software updates I have are done automatically. No. 3, 6 and 7 are impossible for laptop as far as I know. I'll get to no. 5 when I get a new laptop, although I have reservation about Window 8. As for no. 1 and no. 4, I tried the recommended software, CCleaner (I tried the portable version), and wow, it really made so much difference. My free space increased from about...

Another favourite of mine at Rosemary Bites is the chicken kebab. Looks substantial, doesn't it? I assure you that it was very filling. As you can tell (by comparing the food to the utensils), each of the 8 chicken pieces was quite chunky. They are interspersed with alternating onion and capsicum, which were also quite large. Mashed potato on the side, with adequate gravy, and salad with 3 kind of vegetables. This was a dish that had a variety of food on a single plate. It was no wonder that it took quite a while to cook, certainly slower than the pasta with aurora sauce. The taste? Excellent. The chicken was juicy, unlike some kebab that needed plenty of sauce to cover up the dry meat. In fact, the mayonnaise was not needed. The onion and capsicum were grilled just right. Mashed potato was fine and salad was fresh. How much was it? Only RM20.90 plus 10% service charge i.e. without the 6% government tax. It was a bargain.

Ban's grandfather likes nasi kunyit and so when Ban's brother saw newspaper advertisement on the food from PappaRich, we made a trip to the one at Uptown. Since I never had one before, I decided to try it myself. Nasi kunyit literally means tumeric rice and so as expected, it was yellow. However, to my pleasant surprise, it was actually yellow glutinous rice. I like glutinous rice every now and then ( e.g. Nyonya chang ). It was delicious but its outer layer was a little hard. I suspected that it was microwaved because I saw it being passed from the kitchen in a plastic container to the outer kitchen, presumably to be warmed up via microwave oven. The curry chicken was tasty and not spicy - something suitable for me :) Gosh, I can't remember how much it cost but regardless, the portion was quite minimal. It would be better if they also gave an egg. Oh, by the way, don't bother trying their chendol there. Not worth it. See, not even worth a photo here.

Gosh, I thought I blogged about this before but I couldn't find the post. Even Ban thought I did blog about it. Strange...but anyway... Ban once asked me if I have psionic power, what would be the first thing I do? Lol, it wasn't hard for me to answer because I thought about it before. I believe that there's a reason why I'm not granted such immense power: the street will be littered with dead people. Oh, didn't use indicator and suddenly swerve into my lane, huh? Zap! You're dead. Next. Oh, walk in a group and block the entire pavement, huh? Zap! They're dead. Next. Ok, ok, ok. Admittedly, as I grew older, I mellowed. I would have let them live but would put them in an awkward position and no longer inconveniencing other people For example, in the first example above, the car, with the driver, will be magically transported in a field somewhere and with the car unable to start. Perhaps will an eerie message of "use your indicator". So, ...

Nyonya chang is my favourite rice dumpling. Unfortunately, it's not as famous as the ubiquitous Hokkien bak chang and thus much harder to get. What's worse is that it's even rarer to get good deliciously made Nyonya chang. Luckily, my mum knows of a lady in Melaka who makes and sells good tasting Nyonya chang. Bad news is that she usually runs out of them at the wet market after 11am. Good news is that mum knows where she stays and that the seller is willing to sell to people seeking her at her house after 4.30pm. Yay! So recently we went to get a few of them, each costing RM4 but oh boy, it's sooooooo worth it. I hope to make it a habit to get some each time I visit Melaka. Gosh, I better remember how to get there hehehe.

Odd name for a restaurant, isn't it? The waitress there didn't know what plan A was and why the name Plan B. I urged her to ask her boss :P It used to be that for such restaurant, plain water was free but nowadays, more and more restaurants are charging for water. Plan B still does not charge for it. Ban had the Teriyaki Salmon Soba (RM58++). Yes, trust me, the salmon was in there...somewhere. Ban said it was not bad and not too oily. The salmon was seared properly i.e. there was still some raw bit, rather than thoroughly cooked. The soba and vegetables were well cooked. I had the Pho Bo (RM22++). Its broth was light in taste, which was what I wanted that night. Noodle was smooth and round, similar to the one used for Seremban Beef Noodle (if I didn't get it mixed up with some other noodle lol). The sliced beef was thoroughly cooked and the beef balls were tasty. Overall, all the ingredient mixed well with the broth. The only odd one out was the sauc...

There's swimming pool at Ban's place. Ever since I moved in 3 years ago, I had been meaning to try swimming there but there were always reasons/excuses not too: Too crowded, especially between 4.30pm and my usually dinner time of 6pm+, and during weekend Too hot i.e. 11am until 4pm Woke up late and so it was too hot to swim Wanted to have breakfast first and time to digest. Too late to swim after that because it was too hot Too cold because it rained. The water certainly felt cold Work Just plain lazy :P Recently, finally I swam for the first time here (and first time since I swam in OZ in Jan/Feb) and did it again a few days later after that. Swam around 11am+. To stave off great hunger right after the swim, I had half glass of milk before the first swim and half piece of biscuit before the second swim. Had oatmeal after each swim. The pool's water temperature was fine by me. Just nice. In fact, the short light shower I had before going into the pool was cold...

Previous two posts were on the strategic part of Mount & Blade: Warband. This post is about its tactical part, which is chiefly used on a battlefield and during sieges. Oh yes, having a shield is so useful, especially against range attack. For melee attack, you still have the option to parry. My calvaries at the back, my crossbowmen in the middle and... ...my infantries at the front. I generally aimed to have Swadian Knights, Rhodok Sharpshooters and Nord Hurscals. I need to be careful because that means my troop suffers from negative morale if we attack Swadia, Rhodok and Nord respectively for each type of unit. Now that Rhodok is no more, it's a non-issue for the sharpshooters. Later, I changed my tactic a little: if I'm just aiming to defeat enemies on the field, I'll bring only calvary units as they are clearly superior against other units on the battlefield. If I aim to conquer castles or towns, I'll bring archery and infantry units. Of course,...

It's already been 4 years. I believed our relationship has pretty much stabilised (so far) after having living together for about 3 years. Yes, as with any relationship, there were grumpy moments and arguments but thank goodness they have been quite rare. I hope Ban thinks the same hehehe. So here's wishing Ban and I many more years to come, with much love, manjaness and giggles :)

I couldn't resist but capture the castle nearest to Veluca i.e. Grunwalder Castle. Yes, I (red) was surrounded by Rhodok holdings (green) and bordered with Sarranid (yellow) to the south and Khergit to the east but I didn't have quarrels with Khergit (purple) though. My main problem was attracting other lords to defect to me. I didn't want lords who were sadistic and quarrelsome, which left me the choice of good-natured (most difficult to attract), upstanding (second most difficult) and martial. It took me very long time and much persuasion to finally have other lords, which I later realised one reason why: I was too quick to award newly conquered holdings to my existing lords. Leaving holdings unassigned increases the chance of attracting lords of other kingdoms to defect. Conquered Uxkhal, which was originally a Swadian town and so gave Swadia more reasons to declare war on me. Also, managed to capture Ergellon Castle and persuaded 3 lords to defect. Oh, I c...