Here's My Story

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.