Leading the wild into the ways of the man…
I’m flying to Sibu again tonight with my CTO and CFO on the
company’s account. My return ticket is open, courtesy of my CFO, who
thought I might want to stay back for the weekend after our meeting
there on Friday afternoon and another one on Saturday afternoon. I
think I’ll pass on that though, I’ll just go with them, in and out, and
be back by Saturday night.
Hui Sing Hawker Center in Hui Sing Garden is one of the most popular
hawker centers in Kuching. I used to frequent this place when I was
studying in Inti College last time, and it’s been a long while since I
revisited this nostalgic food center, so I went back with a couple of
friends last night.
This is My Home Fast Food which serves chap fun or mixed
rice, which is also called economy rice, fast food, amongst other
things. Basically, you get a plate of white rice and you choose from
the variety of dishes available.
This is the very same place which I used to frequent and it has been
in business for a long time. They have a wide variety of choices and
IMHO, it’s the best one in Hui Sing Hawker Center.
The cutlery from this stall is available from a hot water soaker,
pictured above. It contains fairly hot water, so it’s a good idea to
fish out the spoons and forks instead of reaching in with your fingers.
Hui Sing Garden also has very novel drinks, the most popular one
being a concoction called “White Lady”. It’s a mixture of lemon,
pineapple, laici, sago pearls and lime, with milk holding the whole
concoction together. It’s divine, and very deserving of it’s moniker.
This is cuttlefish with vegetables, a popular side dish that one of
my friends ordered. This implementation is good – they slather the
cuttlefish and veggies with the sauce and grounded peanuts instead of
putting the sauce on the side.
This is what it looks like after it’s been mixed. You have to mix it around to cover everything.
The satay over at Hui Sing is also pretty good. It comes with the standard cucumbers, raw onion slices and ketupat.
This is what my dish looks like – I had pork leg, sweet and sour pork and stuffed bitter gourd.
L-R: Ted Fook, Dominic Liew, Bernice Cheng Shu Yee.
Three new people come in today to join the company. We had a
recruitment drive and this is the new wave that passed the interview
stage. It’s the start of the month and my new coworkers are the new
batch of people to be part of the Huygens Asia team.
This is Bernice Cheng, our new Marketing Executive.
Naturally, this being sixthseal.com, this is me with Bernice, the only female in this batch. 😉
One does not usually associate “Shell” with “water”, in fact, one
does not usually use the letters in the same sentence if one could
avoid it. It just seems unsavory…and wrong. 😉
However, I noticed that Shell had a Merdeka Day (Independence Day)
limited edition mineral water in a glass bottle when I went out for
dinner with friends and I got a couple of those.
It’s manufactured by Eau Claire Mineral Water and its non-carbonated
mineral water in a 320 ml limited edition specially fabricated glass
bottle to celebrate Malaysia’s 47th Independence Day.
Did I mention it was limited edition? 😉 These things always gets
me, damn I hate marketing folks. No offence to any out there, you just
get me every time. 🙂
We went to Yang Ling Sea Food (Stall 32) at Pending.
I paid my respects to my late grandfathers (both maternal and
paternal), who died of lung cancer, and asked them to protect me from
the same fate. 😉 Kidding, kidding. Though some of my more
superstitious friends blanched when they saw me stick my chopsticks in
my food. Apparently, it’s taboo. 😉
Today, the 31st of August, 2004 is Malaysia’s 47th Independence Day from the evil British Empire. 😉
This is the annual martial arts event which spans all the
disciplines like karate, taekwondo, silat, wushu, and yes, even tai
chi. It’s held along a closed off street – I hear it’s always Jalan
Song Thien Cheok. I was caught in traffic congestion when they closed
off the street in the afternoon and cordoned off the entire area.
The actual event is held at 8 pm but they were already setting up
the stalls and preparing for the event way before the scheduled time.
There were lots of little kids…
…as well as some not-so-little kids.
I saw little kids being molested…nah, I’m just kidding, the
instructor was trying to tie the belt on a funny kid who was trying to
run away.
There was also an ambulance there, just in case someone…oh, I don’t know, gets muscle cramps or breaks a fingernail. 😉
The event started with tai chi 18/4 (or something) which had
instructors getting a long line of people involved, as well as the
spectators. Watch the decidedly amusing clip here:
Download: Tai Chi 18 4 video [sixthseal.com]
I promptly decided I have better things to do on a Saturday night after this, so I wrapped up the event. 😉
The teams were on the sidewalk preparing for their on-stage performances.
The silat (Malay martial arts) group told me that performing is hungry work.
I watched the Wushu team prepare for stage:
Download: Wushu team practise video [sixthseal.com]
I got a black belt guy to pose for me…
…as well as the silat group
Lest anyone gets any ideas that sixthseal.com has changed its direction…
…rest assured, I got some girls to pose for me too.
My vote goes to far left. 😉
This is a box of 20 Bollero Kenner cigars. My friend got it from
Indonesia but he didn’t like the taste, and has been giving them away
ever since.
The inside of the box is lined with individual plastic wrapped cigars, ready to be unwrapped and smoked.
The size of the cigar is about half of a full sized cigar – slightly
shorter and with a lower ring gauge, oops, sorry…I meant thinner,
than a Robusto. It’s not in the cigarillo class, this one is bigger
than those.
This is the band of the cigar – it says Kenner Flor Fina, with a red and gold motif.
This is the tip of the cigar – it’s precut, so you can light it up immediately, which I promptly did.
Download: Kenner cigar review video [sixthseal.com]
You can see me play cigar aficionado in this movie. 😉
I didn’t find any fault with the cigar – it tasted woody, with a
smoky aftertaste. It’s good, even though it wasn’t stored in a humidor.
I found it nice. The only problem was the uneven burn that it produced,
but maybe that’s my fault during lighting. It rectified itself after
flame was applied on the uneven side.
I know you’re not suppoed to do that…and you’re not supposed to
fully inhale a cigar too, but I like my tobacco products to give me a
nicotine hit. Oh, and I did do that rolling the smoke in the mouth
thing for the faux cigar aficionado taste test. 😉
I now pull in RM 2,500 with this permanent RM 300 monthly “transport
allowance” that I just got. It’s a token of appreciation for my work in
securing proposals before the annual KPI salary increase, which I hope
will push me into the RM 3k region. 😉
One can wish. Heh!
Oh, and I thought up the company new slogan too – Huygens means assurance. Simple, but I’m rather fond of it. It’s going into our new batch of business cards.
I went out for dinner with a bunch of people from different age
groups yesterday night at Jojo Cafe. I guess the best word for it
is…networking, cliche as that may sound. It was enlightening; got to
meet people from different fields e.g. management, design, publishing,
education etc. and exchange business cards.
I’ll like to give the person who first thought of the concept of
business cards a big hearty slap on the back, coz I won’t remember
names and numbers the next day otherwise. 😉 Anyway, back to the food,
Jojo Cafe is located at 3rd Mile, Kuching and serves really good curry
chicken (or so I hear).
This is their curry chicken – the meat was tender, and the curry was
tasty. There’s nothing wrong with it, except for one thing…it doesn’t
have the spicy curry oomph that I like. It’s a good curry dish for
people who don’t take spicy food though.
Here’s the kailan (a type of vegetable, stating the obvious ;))
cooked with salted fish. Now this dish is good, and hearing me say that
a vegetable dish is good means it’s really good, coz I’m not a big fan
of vegetables at all. The veggies was fresh and crunchy, and still
retains the original moisture and taste without any salted fish
contamination (unless you eat that of course).
Next up is the mutton soup. It’s cooked with a variety of spices,
red dates, mushrooms, and all sorts of stuff. It’s basically mutton
soup, Chinese style.
I didn’t find anything noteworthy about the mutton, but the soup was well broiled and tasted great!
This is tofu cooked with egg and vegetables, lying on top of a
lettuce bed. I can’t comment about tofu, coz long time readers would
know that I don’t like tofu. Well, I don’t like the edible kind of tofu
anyway, but the other kind of tofu… 😉
Now this is the main dish – mango fish! The fish was smothered with
a delightful mixture of unripe mangos, peanuts, raw onions, shallots,
and spring onions. It creates a wonderful fusion of colors, flavors and
different textures, and the fish was fresh to boot. This is easily the
best dish of them all – highly recommended!
After eating all that, should you feel the call of nature,
management reminds you not to leave the left side of your ass behind
(though how that is possible eludes me).
Ice Shop Asia is the once great empire that has seen its famous
plastic cup and straw mammoth logo emblazoned all across town. Outlets
after outlets were built, expanding like the rise of Rome, swathing a
path of destruction over premium retail space like the Nazi blitzkrieg,
and taking over the outlets like…er, the British Empire.
Alas, the glory days of Ice Shop Asia is now over, and like the rise
and fall of civilizations, Ice Shop Asia now maintains a single
battered looking outpost in the town of Kuching, the once proud metal
cup dented and fighting off rust. The single lonely remaining outlet is
the pioneering one, and there wasn’t any electricity when we were
there…
However, there was an aesthetically pleasing young female behind the
counter, so we decided to get a drink despite the dim interior. 😉 I
ordered a passion fruit snow shake and a chocolate ice shake with
pearls. A snow shake is ice blended and does not come with pearls while
an ice shake is basically bubble tea made with ice cream instead of
syrup with optional pearl balls.
The ice is shoveled into their standard plastic heat sealed cups…
…and added with ice cream for an ice shake
…or added with syrup/flavoring for a snow shake/bubble tea
Unfortunately, the device that does the ice crushing was not in
operation due to the power failure and neither was their patented,
really interesting heat sealing device (shown above). That thing
automatically heat seals the top of your plastic cup with a poke able
plastic cover, so you have to poke through it with a straw. I had so
much fun with it last time. I didn’t get the chance to do that though,
coz the machine requires electricity to operate.
Thus, here’s the naked (hey, didn’t came with the heat sealed
plastic cover) Ice Shop Asia drinks – the chocolate ice shake with
pearl balls is on the left and the passion fruit snow shake is on the
right.
The girl apologized for the unfortunate circumstances and I didn’t
mention anything about not being able to poke things through thin,
flimsy other things. 😉
This post is so loaded with double entendres and innuendo…
