October 2003 – Page 3 – sixthseal.com

Aero (Jalan Sultan Ismail)

October 15, 2003 by HB

Aero Restaurant

This is Aero Restaurant & Lounge at the corner of Jalan Sultan
Ismail and Jalan Raja Chulan. The place has a strong emphasis on
windows and transparency and I’ve always been intriuged by the design
of the place whenever I happen to pass by.

The distinctive orange stripes of Aero.

Aero’s bar area.

This is a shot of Aero’s interior.

Aero opens at 12 pm for lunch and the crowd doesn’t seem to be
particularly big…in fact there wasn’t even a crowd in the true sense
of the word. There was an expariate type dining alone at a table in
front of a TV and a couple in their late 30s in the table beside us.
There seems to be some construction work going on though – perhaps for
a revamp of the interior. The menu was rather limited, it spans a
meagre 3 pages and did not offer the wide range of choices expected.
Their food has been refered to as “Modern European” or “Fusion”. I did
not have the chance to sample their main dishes though due to time
constraints.

Chicken salad. The peppers were grinded on the spot into the dish.

Chocolate cake.

What is lunch without a martini?

This is drink with bits of apple floating on it.

I don’t know what this is…

Dessert – some cocktail with a heavy Cognac presence.

The food @ Aero.

Aero has good service (which isn’t unexpected as the waiter to table
ratio was 2:1 by the end of lunch) and a nice ambience – it overlooks a
busy intersection in the heart of KL through large glass windows. I
didn’t find their food especially delicious though, but it was okay.
The drinks were better. 😉

Cat fish (Ikan Keli)

October 14, 2003 by HB

This is catfish from Giants. We were walking around shopping for
groceries when I stumbled upon this. Two largish fish for just RM 2.20,
what a great deal for a starving programmer, I thought. It kinda
reminded me about the lamb brains [sixthseal.com] I got while grocery shopping a while ago. This is what the label looked like:

The cat fish was a little odd though, it was hard to slice and there
was this innards I cleaned from inside but still left a yellow stain on
the fish itself. It leads to concerns about heavy metals and other
things that this bottom feeder could have accumulated, but hey it’s
just RM 1.10 per fish. :p

The other side of the catfish. These catfish leaves browny residue when touched.

Midnight at the office

October 14, 2003 by HB

XM Malaysia midnight club (bound by a common project) – Ivan, Wai
Hing, Shirley, Suzanne, Huai Bin (me). Kelvin and Ganesh were also
around but not working on the same project.

It’s past 12 am in the morning and I’m still at the
office…together with about 6 other people, working on the Sony
Malaysia’s 30th Anniversary project. I just realized that I am an utter
hack today, I took ages to finish the main page and that’s not even
going into coding for dynamic responses on certain triggers. The main
page was just HTML and tables (I fucking hate tables…) and CSS and
yet I was slaving over it for most of the day. Granted, I was having a
borderline paracetamol (APAP) poisoning (don’t ask) and was throwing
up, having abdominal cramps etc but that’s no excuse…

Dinner was provided though…

The point is…I took ages to do something simple, and that is
really depressing…the images from creative were like jigsaw puzzles,
I can’t write a good table to save my life and I even had to send
Yahoo! messages to Grace [pixelphobia.net] (who claims to eat HTML tables and CSS for breakfast) to ask her how to float text on top of static images…

I am still at the office and if there’s a single word that could sum up today it’s omgwtfbbq.

I really need to update my skill sets but that will have to wait, forgive me for not replying the comments today, work awaits…

OIC (10th Organization of Islamic Conference)

October 13, 2003 by HB

This Islamic summit is going on from the 11th to the 18th of October. It can lead to interesting conversations, such as this:

Boss: Why you late?
Me: OIC…
Boss: OIC.

Okay, so that conversation didn’t happen, I woke up nice and early
and got into the office 30 minutes before official work hours coz I
thought there would be road blocks and traffic jams so I used the
LRT/bus.

I’ve been wanting to use that snippet of conversation the past week…what a lame sense of humor I have. 😉

Kimarie Hair Academy

October 12, 2003 by HB

Kimarie @ Sungai Wang

Meet my hairstylist – MC (initials of her name) of Kimarie Hair Academy at Sungei Wang (she has Tuesdays off).

I finally got a haircut yesterday after putting it off for weeks. I
went to Sungei Wang and looked around and found that RM 25 seems to be
the base price for haircuts around there. I went into Kimarie and asked
how much it costs and was told it’s RM 25 by a hairstylist and RM 48 by
a professional. I said I’ll go for the hair stylist, seeing as to how
my bank balance is dismally low and how I have to pay excess bandwidth
fees every month, and I was not disappointed. 😉

Getting my hair cut.

This is a closeup of MC. It’s taken from the mirror reflection
(obviously – haircuts limits your mobility) so the quality isn’t
optimal.

What my non selekeh hair looks like now.

Infusion (My FM) @ Sungai Wang

October 11, 2003 by HB

There was a My FM event called Infusion going on at Sungai Wang at 3
pm this afternoon. I don’t listen to radio (or watch TV) but my
housemates were going so I went along since I was going to get a
haircut anyway. I don’t know any of the DJs here so I was just there to
take photos and I stayed about 5 odd minutes before leaving. Here’s the
photos:

Fun Pin and Vivien Tok.

Another photo of them.

Here’s the last one. I heard from my housemates that another guy
called HS Lee was there too, but I had already gone home then. I think
the event was for Fun Pin who released an album and book or something.

Rasa Ayamas

October 10, 2003 by HB

Rasa Ayamas @ Pusat Bandar Damansara photo

I’ve never eaten at one of the Rasa Ayamas outlets before. The only
previous contact I’ve had with the Ayamas brand is their cold storage
mini drumsticks and of course, the chilli sauce. There is no Rasa
Ayamas outlets in Sibu or Sarawak to the best of my knowledge.

We had Rasa Ayamas Saver Meal B – which came with two thighs of your
choice, a plate of stir fried vegies, spring rolls, rice, soup, dessert
and drinks for two.

This is a picture of the meat area.

The place seems to be popular during lunch time.

The workers were suitably, er…industrious and the turn around for
food is the same as you’ll expect in a fast food outlet. The spring
rolls came out later though, probably a 5 minute wait.

Here’s a photo of the Rasa Ayamas interior.

This is “Saver Meal B” for RM 17.90 (minus spring rolls).

We had Golden Roaster and Pepper Roaster for the chicken. My
apologies for the out of focus picture, I didn’t realize I did not have
macro mode on until I got home.

This is the chicken rice and the soup (which has bits of fish (meat?) balls in it).

The vegetables were stirfried with a suitably low heat – resulting
in a nicely fresh taste being imparted to the dish. Er…what I mean to
say is, they didn’t “murder the vegies” as a common saying goes back
home.

Here’s the mini spring rolls…it was okay, nothing to write home about.

Dessert – nata de coco and lychees served chilled.

Rasa Ayamas has chicken that tastes surprisingly good and the price
is cheap for a meal for 2 in KL, considering what they’re offering.
It’s also salty and full of MSG and hey, that’s good enough for me. 🙂

Crazy Taxi (KL Edition)

October 9, 2003 by HB

Never be late again! Pictured above is KL’s finest taxi driver, the best of the best – he’ll get you where you want, when
you want. This is the second time he’s actually saved me from being
late…I knew it was him from the way he was still accelerating while
pulling up to me and from the tyres screeching to a halt just in front
of me. You want fast? You’ve got fast.

I need to wake up at 6:30 am in order to take the LRT/bus combo
(plus a 25 minute walk), so anytime after that requires me to enlist
the services of a taxi to arrive on time. I woke up at nearly 8 am
today (curses) and the taxi arrived at 8:07 am and got to Jalan Sultan
Ismail at 8:21 am. I shit you not, it’s a time lap that’s worth of
entry into the Guinness Book of World Records. Well, maybe not that,
the Malaysian Book of Records then.

He sure needs to be commended anyway. The way he weaves through the
tightest spots and liberally applies his horn and glares at cars who
even dares to inch a little bit closer to the lane that he wants to
change into. The way he bores down on errant pedestrians who did not
know better and got into his way, even going so far as to make one girl
go “Arrggghhh” and jump out of the way. The way he ignores the traffic
police directing traffic and rushes through anyway.

I got to the office and punched in. 8:26 am. I didn’t think it was possible. Thanks, crazy taxi!

Dodgy Tim Tams

October 7, 2003 by HB

I saw these Tim Tam (one of my favorite things to eat when I have
the munchies in Melbourne) biscuits on the shelves of a Giant
supermarket and was very puzzled at the visible difference in
packaging. The wrapper is different and the size of the pack is
different from the ones I’m used to seeing.

Upon closer inspection, I found out that these ones are made in
Indonesia instead of Australia. It was going for RM 2.69 at Giant (the
supermarket). I don’t know how much imported Tim Tams are, I’ve never
bought them myself here but in Coles it was A$ 2.55 (or A$ 1.98 on
sale).

Product of Indonesia
Developed especially for South East Asia market.
Not for sale in Australia or New Zealand.

I don’t think it would taste the same though, so I didn’t get any.
The outsourced ones always seem to taste mediocre from experience.
That’s not to say Indonesia doesn’t come out with good, quality stuff
though. The legendary “X scores” were from Jakarta. Not that I would
know anything about that first hand of course.

Poliklinik & Surgeri Dr A. Hadi Abdullah & Rakan Rakan

October 6, 2003 by HB

The exterior of the clinic.

I did not go to work today on the account of food poisoning.
Diarrhea, throwing up, the works – so I went to the nearest reasonably
priced doctor (no more RM 150 bills) at Pusat Bandar Damansara. This
was also a polyclinic but judging by the interesting way they run
things here, I figured it wouldn’t be that expensive. Oh, that and the
previous guy before me just paid RM 20.

Anyway, there was no waiting room to speak of – the doctor’s
consultation room was in the same room was the waiting room, and just
partially cordoned off. You could listen to the interesting afflictions
of other patients if you’re so inclined. Definitely not a place to say
“Eh doctor, yesterday I have a go at this char bo hor, and today ah,
very painful when I piss lar…”. The acoustics of the room does not
allow this kind of indiscretion to go unheard.

Lopex 2 mg
“Not more than 3 times a day…later your stools get very hard and you get constipation”

Anti-emetic
One when required.

There was a large toy basket and a child running around with heaps
of toys strewn around the room too. Very interesting, to say the least.
Anyway, it was my turn soon and I told the doctor about my symptoms and
he pulled out his stethoscope for some reason and listened to my heart
for a good 3 minutes and ushered me out of the partially cordoned off
area. That was fast.

RM 25 instead of RM 150 this time.

Anyway, the doctor passed the nurse (whom I think is his wife and
the little girl running around his daughter) the MC (medical cert) with
everything written on it except my name and my company’s name. The
nurse gave me the two pack of pills and filled my name and company into
the sick leave certificate and charged me RM 25 and ushered me out.

Not very professionally done – looks mass photocopied and the doctor wrote on half of it while the nurse wrote the other half.