Archive for November, 2007
A picture paints a thousand calories
Fri, 16 November 2007 5:11 pmSo, I’m going to be mean today and show you some of the calories I collected from my weekend KL trip.
1. Seafood Curry Noodles
Located in a quiet alley in the town of Segambut, this noodle outlet enjoys a thriving business selling seafood noodles in three flavours: curry, tom yam and clear.
Curry is the hot favourite and that’s what we’ve been craving to eat since our last triip there. It’s really the best curry noodles I’ve eaten. Not that I’ve eaten much to begin with. Haha.
Each bowl is so chock full of seafood (mussels, clams, big prawns and squid) that I wanted to donate some to the goonfather. But I didn’t because it was so delicious I had to finish the bowl even if I exploded doing it.
The curry soup is literally to die for!!!
2. Fried Chicken Claw
We had this as part of our dinner in a dirty street filled with small hawker stalls lining both sides.
The chicken claw is mostly a novelty, although it does taste quite good. I enjoyed the regular chicken parts more. The stall was quite popular, too, judging from the neverending queue.
3. Satay
The taste and quality of this satay is about on par with the best satay in Singapore but there are a few special things to add.
There’s a bigger variety. Besides chicken, beef and mutton, there’s also rabbit and venison. And beef tripe. And chicken heart and liver — my favourite!
A chilli oil sauce is available for adding to the regular peanut sauce (you can mix and match the quantity) to spice up the taste. It’s very spicy but very good.
The price is ridiculously low for such good food. It’s RM$0.60 per stick!! That’s like 25 Singapore cents, half the price of an average Singapore satay! The rabbit and venison are priced higher, at RM$1.20 and RM$1.30, respectively, but that’s still cheap!
The stall is located in a rest stop along the Kesas Highway and we have to drive a great distance to get there and back but it’s so worth it we do it every time we go to KL.
This time round, we ordered 60 sticks for three of us and almost died trying to finish it. I only managed to eat 15 sticks! Guess how many the Goonfather ate! Haha!
4. McDonald’s Grilled Chicken Foldover
We drove up to Genting Highlands to eat this. I know it’s crazy, but the Genting version tastes so much better than the Singapore version because the bread is more crispy and there are more vegetables. And the patty is juicier. Like how KFC tastes better in Malaysia than in Singapore. Sometimes we drive to Malaysia just to eat KFC.
5. Hong Kong Milk Tea
This isn’t food and I don’t really want to talk about the tea, except to say that it’s really good.
I actually want to highlight the ice. This was at a Hong Kong style cafe called Prince Cafe in Mid Valley City.
Each glass of iced milk tea comes with a giant chunk of frozen milk tea to keep your drink cold without diluting it. How I love that because I hate my drinks getting diluted by melting ice cubes.
It was a huge chunk, too. By the time I finished my meal and my drink, the chunk still hadn’t totally melted.
I think all cold drinks in the world should be served like that!
I hope you enjoyed helping me count my calories as much as I enjoyed consuming them. =)
Promoting Singapore
Thu, 15 November 2007 11:01 pmShopper vs. Stalker, Snob, Stylist, Salesman, Student
Wed, 14 November 2007 8:20 pm
When I was shopping in KL, I noted five distinct types of clothing shop assistants.
(Maybe some of them are actually shop owners but I’m just going to call them shop assistants because it makes my job easier.)
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1. The Stalker
This creepy shop assistant doesn’t greet you when you enter the shop but politely walks towards you, taking care to keep a one-metre (3.2-feet) distance from you. When you walk, she walks. When you stop, she stops. Ever mindful of allowing you your one-metre personal space.
I encountered a Stalker in a big shop (about two-thirds the size of a professional basketball court). She attached herself to me and silently followed my every footstep. It took me 20 minutes to finish browsing and she silently followed me for 20 minutes. Freaky.
2. The Snob
I’ve met many haughty shop assistants in expensive boutiques who turn their noses up at you if you walk into their shop without having at least one item of Gucci, Prada or Louis Vuitton on your person.
But this particular Snob I met was manning a no-name shop selling cheap stuff in a second-rate shopping mall. When I walked in, she walked out of her counter. She didn’t walk towards me but stood on the far end of the shop to watch me silently.
As I was checking out a rack of clothes, a blouse fell off its hanger. Because I was carrying multiple shopping bags on my left hand, I struggled to rehang the blouse with my right hand. The Snob didn’t rush up to help. She stood watching, three metres away.
When I finally manged to set the blouse right, I turned to look at her. She was staring at me with a borderline hostile look on her greasy, pimply face. What a pity, because I had seen several things I liked in the shop and was planning to spend some money.
3. The Stylist
The Stylist delights in giving you free personal shopper services.
The most enthusiastic one I met was a young, good-looking Chinese guy wearing punky clothes and a punky hairdo. As I browsed, he started to whip out clothes randomly.
“This would look great on you. You could pair it with tights or jeans, and maybe a shiny belt.”
He even went to the trouble of fishing out clothes from different parts of the shop to show me how to mix and match. He remained polite and enthusiastic even when I rejected all his creations.
He showed me about 20 outfits in all. I only bought two items, but it was two more than I would have bought if he hadn’t been such a personable bloke.
4. The Salesman
The Salesman tries to sweet-talk you into buying stuff, telling you how fashionable this is, how gorgeous you look in that.
This particular Salesman, who is, in fact, a woman, went all out to ensure I found something I liked. I had taken a dress and two pairs of shorts into the dressing room. Barely half a minute later, she knocked on my door. “How is it?”
“Er…,” I said, not knowing what to say.
Quickly buttoning up my shorts, I opened the door and asked if she could get me the same pair in another colour. When she returned, she was holding two more pairs of shorts in her hands.
“Do you want to try these?” she asked. “You’ll look very nice in them.”
I didn’t like them so I apologetically no-thanked her before I shut the door to try on my shorts.
Next, I tried on the dress. One strap was twisted, so I once again engaged her help. Later, her colleague brought another piece in a different colour to compare and we found out that the strap was intentionally twisted.
I told them I wanted to try on the new colour. While deliberating over the colours, my ever-diligent Salesmen knocked on my door again.
“How is it? Why don’t you try on these shorts?” she said, and slung two new pairs of shorts over the top of my door.
“Er… no need lah,” I said.
“It’s ok, just try!”
I grabbed the shorts and tossed them in a corner.
One minute later, I was still deliberating between the two dresses.
Another knock on the door.
“How are the shorts? Have you tried them on yet?”
The whole time I was there, she tried to recommend me all the shorts they had in range and made me try on about six pairs which I had totally no interest in.
Stressful.
5. The Student
Shop assistants must all go to the same school and learn to say the same thing. During my weekend in KL, the most-heard phrase was: “This is the newest arrival.”
The phrase just rolls off their lips the moment I step into the shop and touch the first piece of clothing!
Most of them stop at that sentence and allow me to browse in peace thereafter. A few illustrious Students add: “You can try it on.”
And then there are those who rattle out a stock phrase with every piece of clothing you touch, as if they were taught in school that “if a customer touches something, that means the customer is interested! Fuel the interest by saying something about it!”
Touch a blouse.
“This is the newest arrival!”
Touch a skirt.
“You can try it on!”
Touch a dress.
“This comes in three different colours!”
Touch a pair of pants.
“This comes in three different sizes!”
Touch a necklace.
“This is for sale at 20% off!”
They simply must have something to say for every item you touch. Even if they have nothing informative to say, they must say something.
Touch a hat.
“This is a hat!”
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It was great shopping in KL. Most shop assistants are nice, even if some are overbearingly so.
What are your shopping experiences? Have you encountered those listed above or do you have more types to add?
Share them!
The porter who couldn’t count
Tue, 13 November 2007 3:26 pmHere’s an incident that had me in stitches for two minutes.
We were in KL for the weekend. (That’s Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, for my foreign readers. I don’t know if you call it KL, too.)
One evening, while the Goonfather was getting driving directions from a hotel porter, I photographed the trees around us because they were so beautiful, strung with pretty blue lights.
I was just about to take a photo of myself to see what I look like with blue light cast on my face when the Goonfather started to leave.
“Wait!” I said.
“What?”
“I need to take a photo of myself first,” I said, waving my camera.
The porter jumped in. “You want to take a photograph? I can help you.”
“Er… okay,” I said and made the Goonfather stand beside me to have a tourist photo taken.
The porter must have thought I was mad because I didn’t want to have a photo taken with my back against a nice, touristy background, such as the hotel entrance.
He walked off to frame us against the hotel entrance but I said, “No, can you take the photo from here, instead?”
I pointed to where I wanted him to stand.
The porter was Malay and didn’t speak very good English. So I wasn’t sure if it was the language barrier, or he was just resistant to my radical photography ideas. He refused to stand where I pointed (because that meant my background’s a boring old driveway). He kept shifting to different spots, everywhere but where I wanted. And he couldn’t seem to grasp the fact that I didn’t actually want the tree to be in my picture.
Finally, I decided to quit making a big deal and just let him take the photo.
He raised the camera and counted for us slowly.
“One…… three…… four!”
Snap.
The Goonfather felt my body quiver ever so slightly as I fought to hold my laughter in. I quickly thanked the porter and retrieved my camera. Then we escaped into the basement carpark where both of us exploded with laughter.
“Oh, man, I was trying not to laugh upstairs but your body kept shaking!!” complained the Goonfather.
“Didn’t!” I protested. “I only smiled!”
After that, we argued whether the miscounting was intentional.
The Goonfather said the porter was simply making a joke to make us laugh.
But he wasn’t absolutely sure.
I argued that the porter didn’t look like he was joking because he didn’t have the smile and twinkle in the eye that usually accompany jokes. He just looked very earnestly friendly.
Besides, what kind of a stupid joke is miscounting?
But he did give the Goonfather directions in largely English (with a bit of Malay), so he should have been able to count to 10 in English.
The truth is still a mystery and we’re back in Singapore now.
But this was the picture the porter took for us.
Well, he’s a nice bloke, really. I don’t mean to make fun of him but it was really funny.
More about my trip in the next update!
Who the heck eats chocolate with chilli?
Sun, 11 November 2007 7:41 pmToday’s blog is ostensibly about chocolate, but it’s actually just an excuse to camwhore.
You see, one day, the Goonfather rushed home all excited and said to me, “I have something yummy for you! You’ll love it!”
“What what what?” I cried excitedly.
“Here!”
“Eew! What’s that?” I exclaimed.
“Chilli chocoate! It’s yumzzzzzzzz!”
“Gross!!!” I said.
“Just try it lah! I had to smuggle it out of the office!”
It was a leftover bar of chocolate that had arrived from Germany and circulated around his office. He thought I would like it because I love chilli and I love chocolate. And his colleagues all loved it, apparently.
But the thought of mixing chilli with chocolate has never crossed my mind. What a crazy combination.
Still, I had to give it a try.
Slowly, skeptically, I took a bite.
I chewed reflectively.
“Yuck!” I said, delivering the verdict straight to the point.
“It’s dark chocolate. I hate dark chocolate,” I complained.
“I can’t even taste the chilli,” I continued.
“There’s a bit of a spice, but it’s more sour than spicy,” I finished.
The Goonfather called me lousy (again) for not knowing how to appreciate dark chocolate.
I don’t like the taste lor!! Cannot meh?
And, dark chocolate aside, I don’t care whether it’s Lindt or not. Chilli chocolate is weird!
