Here's My Story

Three weeks of family reunion . As expected for a large group, there was hassle and stress planning and arranging activities even for a simple one such as what to have for lunch :) But overall, it went well. Tiring on some days. Fortunately, we had adequate rest days. Hopefully my parents and my youngest sister shared the same sentiment especially since they don't get to see my other sister as often as I do. Yes, I'll be going to Australia this year, as I've done almost every year. Parents are getting older and goodness knows how long more they have much energy to do much, especially travelling. Hopefully we'll have another reunion in the near future soon.

In my previous post , I blogged about a new build for WvW using Settler armour. I'm pleased to say that I had all the exotic pieces and in fact I'm painstakingly replacing each one of them with ascended version (3 so far, 3 to go). I still, however, stick to the exotic Draconic skin because it looks nicer. I'm happy that it has worked quite well for me during PvP and WvW. I had gotten some hate messages but I didn't care because it worked well to help my team mates and I didn't do anything illegal. Some people just have a narrow vision of what people should play. So childish lol. For such people, I use the command /block :) In addition, I received a beautiful piece of hand armour skin: Radiant Vambrace. Hence, I updated the look of my warrior's outfit: This was taken from the "Hero" panel. Ideally I would like to dye the outfit predominantly white to match the Radiant Vambrace but white dye is too expensive to purchase. After some research and...

I wonder how many customers managed to get dining furniture at this shop.

Think it applies to sexual orientation too.

This restaurant is tucked in a little inside away from the lower ground walkway of One Utama. I would have easily missed it if it wasn't my habit of looking around as I walk. One fine day, after dinner, Ban and I took a look at their menu and decided that there were food that we both could eat. However, it took quite sometime before I remember to suggest going there for dinner :) We were on the way to Uptown to either eat at Hokano, Arata or Sukiya Gyudon when I suddenly remembered Nana's. Their Wakame Tamago Udon (RM 15.80) price seems expensive for what they had but to their credit, it had generous amount of seaweed and udon. Their Dashi soup was unfortunately quite bland and probably needed a little more salt. The udon itself was not bad but certainly couldn't beat Arata's udon. The Hoji (roasted green tea) Chocolate Parfait (RM 19.80) was expensive. A particular unusual ingredient is the piece of cake which tasted similar to butter cake in texture (so...

Every year I will go to Australia to visit my sister (except for one particular year, I believed). This year will be no exception (cross fingers!) but it is extra special this year because she and her family are down here in Malaysia :) It's their first visit since almost 5 years ago. We are (including my parents) at my youngest sister's place in Butterworth. We had vacation in Penang for a few days. Notably, we went to Kek Lok Si Temple and Botanical Garden/Penang Hill. More importantly, we went to sample different food at my sister's request :) Everyday tired though. It's been a while since we are all together and it has been a good reunion thus far. Hopefully it'll be good throughout later.

Since the last "problem" I had, it was smooth-sailing drinking V-Soy Multi-Grain every morning until about a week ago. For some strange reasons, I started having acid reflux that didn't really go away even until after dinner. By then, I had to take medicine lest I couldn't sleep at night. I was worried that the soymilk could be the culprit. It occurred to me that I usually drink it together with oat. To be certain, I tried having oat without the soymilk one morning. Well, nothing happened. So I went ahead and had some soymilk. Nothing happened too! Suddenly I thought of William's comment in one of my blog posts : "I can't take soy milk on an empty stomach. Causes pain." Perhaps in my case, it causes acid reflux instead? I tried the above sequential intake 2 more times and once again, I was fine. Well, I'll take this good news :) At least, still can drink soymilk albeit lengthening my breakfast time.

The one and only time I dined at Chilli's was years ago at the One Utama's outlet. One day, after a gym session, Ban suggested Chilli's as a change from our usual Sushi Zanmai or Sushi Q. Lo behold, it was just opposite the gym. So convenient :) We would have parked here if we had known how strict they were :P It was my first time seeing a menu that bothered to explain the difference between rare, medium-rare, medium, medium-well and well-done. After considering a few options, I decided to take a chance on Lamb Shoulder (RM 33.95). Most lamb steaks I had were tough and so I was hoping this would be different. Unfortunately, it wasn't. It was tough and a chore to eat. I guess my mouth got a good work out. Too bad because the rest of the dishes were quite good. The black pepper sauce was just nice and not too spicy. Although the mashed potato came with cream (rather than cheese as it was with Ban's dish), the potato's flavouring was more p...

A month or so ago, it rained heavily on my way to my student's home. Once there, I hurriedly (was late because of slow down in traffic) got out of my car and into his house. In the process, I forgot to switch off my car headlights. I wasn't aware of that until 1.5 hours later when the security guard (in charge of that gated community) informed my student of it. Panicked, I tried but couldn't start my car engine. My student's parents mechanic was situated in another area and so there was no point asking them for his phone number. Fortunately, I had phone number of a mechanic whose workshop was nearby. He used to be my sister's mechanic when she was living in KL. The mechanic agreed to help me jumpstart my car but I needed to wait. Half an hour later, I discovered that he couldn't make a move because at that time there was no one else looking after the workshop. I had no choice but to wait as I did not know anyone else. I was getting very anxious as it was nea...

As actuaries, our training is about making rational commercial decisions based on evaluating scientific and quantitative evidence. In a world where decisions are driven more by celebrity endorsement than by evidence, this is vital work. - Sharanjit Paddam