Here's My Story

I had been meaning to try this restaurant but somehow I kept forgetting. One day, while Ban was out for a family dinner, I had mine there. I distinctly remember taking a photo of the food I had but I can't find the photo anywhere. Humph. I ordered the pasta aglio olio (RM11) and added the ingredient grilled shrimp (RM6). It was fragrant, which was a pleasant surprise, and the pasta portion was quite large. Thus it was rather disappointing that it was a little bland, not spicy at all and a little greasier than the usual aglio olio. The shrimp, thankfully, was great. Juicy and fresh. As for drinks, I had the white fungus with longan drink (RM5). It was more like dessert although it was classified under drinks. It was quite bland and there was no longan in sight. However, it seems to complement the pasta quite nicely. Perhaps to wash down the salt and grease? Will I try it again? Hmmm the service was quite good and thus I'm inclined to give it another try. I'll brin...

For fans of Might & Magic franchise, here's another avenue to enjoy some aspects of the game: Duel of Champions  ("DoC"). It's free-to-play. The heroes and creatures used here are from Heroes 6. You will recognise some of them graphically, albeit some with different names. This is a card game, in the same vein as Magic the Gathering ("MtG"). In summary, Each hero comes with starting stats of Might, Magic and Destiny. Every turn, can activate the hero's ability to increase one of the stats or draw a card or activate a special hero ability if available. There are 3 types of cards you can "deploy": creature, spell and fortune and each one has different stats requirement. Besides meeting the stats requirement, you'll need to spend resources to play a card. By default, you'll earn 1 resource in turn 1, 2 resources in turn 2, 3 in turn 3, so on and so forth. The battlefield is divided into two: one for each opponent side and fur...

Its full name, according to the menu on its official website , is "The Euphoria Banana Split Waffle Sundae". It has Double Vanilla Ice Cream Scoops, Waffle Squares, Crunchy Dark Waffle Balls, Gooey Toffee & Fresh Bananas, served with Pure Melted Chocolate & Caramelised Pecans. At AUD14.50, it is such a huge portion that I definitely couldn't finish it by myself (shared with my sister). In addition, after awhile, the chocolate was too much for me ("jelak" in Malay language; closest English word is "bored"). I had to stop to drink some water and rest a while before continuing. Too much chocolate? Too much sweetness? *shrug* I love chocolate ice-cream but probably not in this manner. I suspect banana split served with chocolate ice-cream is good enough for me. Nevertheless, thanks to my sister I finally get to patronise the famous Max Brenner Chocolate Bar.

Tony Romas served food that are of higher-than-average price and so I seldom go there. I did enjoy having the food there previously - the last was for celebrating Father's Day with my family. Recently, Ban and I had lunch there on my birthday after gym. Yes, I felt a little extravagant the special day :) Apparently they started something new since that Father's Day celebration (years ago lol): they served a few slices of bread and butter as appetiser, for free. There was, however, no butter knife in sight. There was a steak knife and I wouldn't had minded using it as butter knife if it wasn't for its humungous size (that just screamed "use me only for cutting steak!"). Shockingly, they informed me that they don't have butter knives! Whaaaat? Either someone didn't think things through or they are that stingy. Updated 28 May 2014: Oh, found another photo: Also, I was reminded by my sister that they did serve bread with butter as appetiser d...

Normally when I'm playing a ARPG (Action Role-playing Game) computer game, I'll try to kill whatever that can be killed in the game to get experience provided there are great adverse consequences (e.g. NPCs start killing you, entire town hate you etc). For example, in Rift, there are "critters" such as fox, rabbit, squirrel where you can just one-shot kill it. I assumed that many players do the same. In Guild Wars 2, they have such critters as well. So yes, I have killed one or two rabbits but I didn't continue because the experience gained was miniscule. Ban, however, reacted differently when he saw a rabbit: "Oh rabbit, I want to bring you home." @@ LOL

After the second visit , I was keen to have their salmon sashimi set and so Ban and I had our lunch there recently after gym. The salmon sashimi had the same thickness as the one we saw but, oh boy, much smaller in length and width. The salmon maki this time had a discernible smaller diameter but with similar height (i.e. taller than usual) and (still) with pieces of salmon rather than mashed meat. The grilled salmon, fortunately, was not any smaller and quality was "ok" according to Ban. Looks like this restaurant has problem maintaining consistency. Will I go there again? Probably, and I'll order the same thing to check its consistency.

I mentioned Kita No Zen only once  in passing but it is one of the Japanese restaurants that Ban and I regularly visit. It is next to Hokkaido Ichiba, its sister restaurant. In fact, they have overlapping menu. The impression I have (right or wrong) is that Kita No Zen serves more sushi and sashimi while Hokkaido Ichiba serves more noodle. If you know the actual difference, please do tell me. Oh, it is also the only Japanese restaurant we patronise that serves green tea for free. Normally at Kita No Zen, I will order ala carte sushi and usually it's all salmon sushi. However, on rare occasions (Valentine's Day, birthday, dating anniversary) I'll try something new like this: The only thing I really didn't like was the squid sushi. The rest were fine although some sushi were a tad small. I was shocked that this cost RM50! Oh, come on, the maki's filling was cucumber. Definitely overpriced, isn't it?

One day, after gym, Ban and I were walking around thinking of what to have for lunch when he pointed out Inaho. Yes, we tried it before  and our experience wasn't good then. However, we decided to give it another try (generous mood I guess lol). While waiting for our lunch set meals to arrive, I noticed the salmon sashimi set that the next table's customer ordered. Wow, it had like 6-7 slices of salmon that were quite thick and large. It came with a bowl of rice, salad and soup. For RM22, it seems cheap! This was what I ordered. The cawanmushi was soft and of the right level of saltiness. The tempura didn't crumble easily (that's good!) with light tasty sauce. There was a squid tempura which was unusual. The salmon sushi was inconsistent in size but even the smallest one was of sufficient size. The bowl of salad was small but boy it was fresh and without blemish. I was pleasantly surprised by the salmon maki: instead of the usual mashed meat, it had pieces of fis...

Yes, the food chain has reached the shore of Australia and, more importantly, Canberra. My sister and her family had tried it a few times and loved it. It's better than their next best Malaysian restaurant and a little cheaper. Yay! So in my recent visit, I requested to try the food there. Ironically, I rarely visit PappaRich here in Malaysia lol. There were a few options in the menu I wanted to try. In the end, I ordered their chicken chop: I was surprised when I first tasted the rice: it was genuine chicken rice! It has the chicken stock taste together with tinge of ginger. The rice was pretty good although I was skeptical about it served with chicken chop. Unfortunately, I was right: the chicken chop marinade was so salty that it overwhelmed even the brown sauce itself. That of course meant that white rice would have been more suitable than chicken rice to be served in this dish. Although it was supposed to be coated with bread crumbs, I couldn't see or taste an...

On my recent trip to Australia, I took the opportunity to ask my b-i-l's help in borrowing Fables from the library there. Good news was that there were a few volumes available. Bad news was that they weren't in the right order. Oh well, some is better than none. My b-i-l also lent me this to read: the first 20 issues of Spiderman! I didn't manage to finish reading it. What I discovered was that Spiderman's web was much more powerful than I thought. It could be weaved into a shield, fireproof shoes, parachute etc. Amazing lol. It was quite entertaining reading how Spiderman dealt with his various nemesis, usually after some initial setback. Half of the time he had to use his expertise in science to help him. For a mere high school science student, he was brilliant! Y The Last Man was borrowed from the library. Intriguing story: every single male species on Earth died at precisely the same time, except for Yorrick and his male pet monkey. Chaos everyw...

Shame on you for blocking one side of the road. Also, parking at the corner endangered other motorists as well. Inconsiderate fool.