Leading the wild into the ways of the man…
I had a sudden and inexplicable urge to get a piercing while having supper the night before, after a long day discussing Family Matters (TM).
I can’t go for extreme piercings due to the nature of my work so I settled for a simple ear cartilage piercing.
It cost RM 50 and it’s healing well so far (which is rare – I pierce a lot of places and the ear is the hardest to heal for me). Next up: Rook piercing! Heh!
YoYo Cafe is a bubble tea establishment at Centerpoint, Kota Kinabalu. There is no particular reason for its popularity – you can ponder all you want and analyze till your brains hurt and still be hard pressed to figure out why people throng to this place like bees to honey. This is exceedingly puzzling because:
a) The bubble tea they serve isn’t the best nectar that ever crossed my lips
b) They have a very limited selection
YoYo Cafe serves bubble tea and bubble tea only (except for the odd iced confections recently added to their menu). They have an intricate system of ordering where you choose the items you want, pay at the cashier, get a number and wait for your number to be called.
We were there on a weekday and the average wait is 15 minutes. I’ve waited longer the last time I was in KK.
I ordered the Yoyo Ice Special (not realizing it comes in a bowl) while Jerine had the Chocolate Bubble Tea with pearls. Hers tasted pretty good actually.
Thus, as the Eighth Mystery of the World – here’s YoYo Cafe, no reason or rhyme, it’s just packed with people wanting a fix of bubble tea.
A word to the wise: Carrying around a bowl in your left hand and a spoon with your right while walking isn’t as fun as it looks.
I have very fond memories of carnivals and fun fairs. It just brings you right back to when you were a little kid with no worries at all. The good ol’ times when your father and mother is nothing less than deities in their own right. I remember my dad bringing me to a circus when I was a wee one – they were sold out but I sulked (it was in Kuching so I was younger than 7 then) and my dad managed to hustle a couple of tickets. It was the best night ever.
I’m 29 now but I like to think that I’m young at heart. I love carnival games and going to theme parks. It just evokes nostalgia through rose tinted glasses – a better time, a safe period, the sanctuary of youthful folly.
Walking through street fairs while taking in the scents of food is one of the best things in life.
However, sometimes the scents are more accurately described as odors. Human traffic, crowded conditions and our fine Malaysian weather is a recipe for BO.
…and my friends, that recipe can rival even Martha Stewart’s best cooking. 😉
I’m sure you’ve had unwelcome smells invading your olfactory senses while out and about. Heck, sometimes I can even smell the very same on myself. >.<
I use a lot of Gatsby products – look at the mousse, gel and wax that I have in my bathroom. I heard Gatsby came out with a new deodorant and I popped into the local friendly Guardian (against bad BO) to check it out.
There is a wide range of roll-on and spray deodorants and after the smell test I settled on the Clear Ocean Gatsby Deodorant Spray.
Who doesn’t want to smell like the beach? A surfer boy scent which rates high on Fresh, Sweet and Sporty. It’s a clean and fresh fragrance that lasts throughout the day so you won’t have to worry about raising your arms to snap your fingers at the waiter during lunch. I know, damn CINA right?
The best thing about the Gatsby deodorant spray is that it smells fresh and it’s affordable to boot. You won’t even have to shell out RM 200+ for eau de toilette to smell nice.
Anyway, back to the Gatsby Deodorant Street Fair – it’s happening on the 17th of April from 10 am to 5 pm at Front Foyer, Ground Floor, Berjaya Times Square, Kuala Lumpur. *blocks calender*
I’m excited coz there will be lots of fun fair games that day and lucky draws featuring prizes worth up to RM 15,000 up for grabs! There’s also Sumo wrestling (remember that?), gladiator battles (w00t!) and various other carnival games – something for everyone!
Unfortunately, this event is not an open invite…you have to earn your way in. Blog about the Gatsby Deodorant Street Fair with the title “I’m going to the Gatsby Deodorant Street Fair” and send your full name, IC number and permalink to gatsby@nuffnang.com to get your tickets!
You’ll also have to include in your blogpost:
1. The date, time and location of the event.
2. There are going to be lucky draws and we have various cool gadgets worth up to RM15,000 up for grabs!
3. Among the exciting fun-fair games on that day – Sumo Wrestling (in air bag suits!), gladiator battles and other amusing and addictive games you would expect at a fun-fair!
4. Lastly, share this link with your readers : www.gatsby.com.my/streetfair
(Gatsby Deodorant Clear Ocean Spray) surf on over to the Gatsby Deodorant Street Fair site to find out what’s going on that day. Don’t miss out – I’ll be there with the rest of the Nuffnangers and Nuffies and it’ll be a blast, so get your entries in now.
Not a blogger? No worries! Just log on to the site and play the games there. The top score of each week from any game will win a pair of invites to the Gatsby Deodorant Street Fair!
I love the smell of napalm in the morning!
Fear of the dark, fear of the dark, I have a constant fear that something’s always near. You know that Iron Maiden classic? I always get reminded of the chorus whenever I have to take photos at night. It always comes out terrible – noisy if I set the ISO too high, overexposed if I use flash.
Case in point(s):
Birthday karaoke session gone wrong due to low lighting
Flash fail
This pristine beach in Kota Kinabalu looks like a sandbox in a playground
Overexposed…and not in a good way
WTF is this? I can’t even tell if it’s chicken, beef or pork. I am forced to caption it as Mystery Meat.
Another beef (no pun intended) I have with my digicam is that it can’t record in High Definition. HD is the way of the future, even YouTube supports HD uploads now. I feel like I’m in the Stone Age (okay maybe not, Bronze Age can?) whenever I take videos with my digicam – the details are lost and with a lot of people connecting their computers to large screen LCDs now you really need to film in HD to keep up.
This is what my videos look like currently:
640×480 – VGA. It’s a marvel…back in 1994 when that was the resolution of most monitors. Now with large LCD monitors running on high resolutions it just looks like a postage stamp. 🙁
Enter Sandman! (another song reference)
The new Cyber-shot TX7 is loaded with the BIONZ IPE (Image Processing Engine) which I am really familiar with. I can vouch for the image quality. Combine it with the Carl Zeiss Vario Tessar lens and a respectable 10.2 MP “Exmor R” CMOS sensor that reduces noise and you have the perfect digicam for night photography!
Blur be gone!
The Cyber-shot TX-7 has features like sweep panorama and anti-motion blur in addition to the impressive Handheld Twilight mode. You won’t have to worry about shaky photos and with the AVCHD Full HD movie recording mode, you’ll be able to present your nights out in full glory!
At 1920 x 1080 @ 50i movie mode, you’ll be hard pressed to find another digicam with similar qualities. It’s a touch screen digicam too, and having had 3 Sony digital cameras in the past, I have to say that it’s very nifty. The best part about it is that you only have to touch the LCD screen to focus on the subject.
Alright party people! You’ve had nights out where you think you captured awesome photos but when you go back home and upload it to your computer, you find out that it’s crappier than a lavatory full of excretion. Right? Right?
Don’t be ashamed of them photos – play “Uncover the night” or submit the pics to the “Night gone wrong” contest and stand a chance to win your very own Cyber-shot TX7!
Enjoy your nights out without worrying about taking horrible photos!
I’m an Aries and have strong attributes related to that horoscope. It describes me down to a T. We like beautiful things. Now, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and all that and there are many beautiful things in the world.
Yes, this is what comes into mind for most guys but there are beauty in other things too.
Nature
Friendship
Heck, there is even beauty to be found in random notes on a toilet door in a 10 room shared home. 😉
However, the thing I admire the most is the design skillz that people have. I just don’t have the necessary creativity with art as I do with the written word. I’m constantly amazed by the stuff that people can come up with.
This is the Best Entry in the Dell Design Studio contest. Titled “Old Style” by Amirul Hasrie it features an abstract pattern which reminds me of the concrete jungle juxtaposed with hues of green in an attempt to re-conciliate nature with the big city. He walks away with vouchers and a Dell Design Studio laptop with his design on it. How cool is that?
The other winner is the design by Sin Ong Toh called simply “Dell“. It has a very Zen feel to it with the budding lotus flowers. He won the Most Popular Design by Votes and I can certainly see why. It’s a photograph with post production elements that garnered him 333 votes.
Dell has a new range of laptops to cater to every person and the current one features a partnership with OPI, producing a series that matches your notebook to your nail color. I’m particularly intrigued by the “I’m Not Really a Waitress” design:
This design called 100 Years in NY by Deanne Cheuk is awesome too!
The Dell Studio 15 laptop is not just a pretty face but has plenty of horse power under the facade, with up to Intel Core i7 Quad-Core processors with a nifty 15.6″ 16:9 aspect ratio LED screen and other features like Blu-ray, mobile broadband and surround sound complete with sub woofer built in.
I’m quite tempted by the laptops coz it has both beauty and brains and comes at a reasonable price tag to boot! It’s very convenient to buy Dell coz they have been offering online purchases since Time Immemorial (TM).
I remember buying a Dell tower PC back when I was 14. This was in the heydays of e-commerce and understandably, my dad had reservations about using a credit card to make purchases online. How the times have changed, you’ll think of purchases online first before buying from a brick and mortar shop nowadays.
Interested in the Dell Studio series? Get it here!
Pulau Sapi is one of the islands off the coast of Kota Kinabalu, Sabah. I’ve been to Pulau Manukan so this time I wanted to check out Pulau Sapi.
We were staying at Magellan Sutera Harbor so just a short stroll leads us to the marina where we can catch a boat to the island.
The trip took only 10 minutes due to the high speeds at which the boat was travelling – it costs RM 50 per person and you don’t even need to travel all the way to town…
…one of the perks of staying at Sutera Harbour. This is the view of the resort from the sea.
The boat takes you right to the jetty at Pulau Sapi – there are schools of fishes that you can literally see swimming beneath the crystal clear green waters!
Mmm…tasty! Er, I mean what a beautiful sight!
We slept in so by the time we got to Pulau Sapi, we were FAMISHED. We each ordered two portions of lunch. Heh!
Things we did:
Contemplated whether to cook this monitor lizard in BKT
Watched lovers oblivious to everyone else on the beach – including his exposed intergluteal cleft (known as butt crack in human anatomy terminology)
Laughed at some of the Engrish signs
Chilled by the beach
Pulau Sapi is not as commercialized as Pulau Manukan and although the island is smaller, it is a lot more tranquil – after a huge group of tourists on a conference left anyway. 🙂
I remember the 2006 World Cup like the back of my hand. I was single and earning quite a bit so I had a little something riding on each of the matches. I was on a total winning streak, raking it in like nothing else. I supported the underdog in every match and stayed up late to watch the matches.
Anyway, after a long winning streak (and a couple of losses) I decided to bet higher during the semis. I lost in both of the matches as well as the 3rd place ranking game so I was forced to try and cover my losses by putting RM 20,000 in the finals on France.
I went to a sports bar with a couple of my friends (who were all betting on Italy) to watch the kick off of the final match of The Beautiful Game (TM). I thought it would be wiser to put it on Zidane, despite having to concede 1 goal. I was right.
Zidane scored at the 7th minute! SEVENTH! It was a penalty kick and I downed my beer in celebration while my friends complained about the controversial goal. I just needed ONE MORE GOAL to seal the deal. Unfortunately, Italy equalized within the first half and I kept on waiting for another goal for the rest of the match. By the 80th minute, I was practically praying for France to score just so I wouldn’t lose any money. I just needed 1 goal to keep my 20k – I’ve already given up on winning so I wasn’t gunning for 2. Alas, it was not meant to be. It tied 1-1 at the 90 minute point.
It was fortune reversal most foul.
I had to be extremely frugal after that and stopped seeing my expensive psychiatrist and went to another one at a private hospital. I remember seeing a cute pharmacist there and it so happens that my bookie takes bets from the hospital as well. I still remember the conversation when I passed him the 20,000 smackeroos:
Me: Hey, I saw this really cute girl at the pharmacist today.
Him: Oh, that’s Stephanie.
Me: Really? You sure? I thought her name starts with an A from her tag.
Him: Yeah man, her name is Stephanie – hottest girl in the pharmacy.
Me: Hmm…alright I’ll call her.
I did just that and went out on a date with her the next day. She asked me what car I was driving and the licence plate and the next thing I knew, I saw this girl smiling while walking towards my car.
I was aghast…
It wasn’t the person I had my eye on.
She was hot but it was not the cute girl that I was interested in.
I couldn’t very well bail (gentleman here k?) so I opened the door for her and we went out for lunch. That was a very memorable lunch coz halfway through it, she told me she knows me and reads my blog. Next thing I knew, a bottle full of DF-118 slid across the table.
“It’s for you. A gift. I know you like this so I got it for you“
I was delighted and abashed at the same time. I didn’t even bring her flowers!
We started going out after that and went to Thailand together during a pharmacist’s convention there. It was a whirlwind romance and she was the person I loved the most – I was 24 and she was 29 and oh so worldly and wise.
She even did a tattoo of a stylized “6” for sixthseal.com on her chakra.
She dumped me about six months into the relationship though.
You know what they say, with one hand He giveth and with the other taketh away. 😉
BTW, I never did tell her I was originally interested in her friend, who I later found out was called Amanda. Heh!
What is your football story? Living in a football crazed nation where “World Cup Fever” (Symptoms: Unexplained medical leave, fatigue in the office, et al) I’m sure you have a lot of interesting stories to tell! It’s every football fan’s dream to watch a football match live. Sony Ericsson is running a contest where you just have to email your football story in to stand a chance to win a trip to South Africa to watch not just any football match but a FIFA World Cup 2010 match live!
Yes, the prize is an all expenses paid trip to watch a FIFA World Cup 2010 match live! Fulfill your dreams and get bragging rights by writing your football story, posting it on your blog and sending the permalink to extratime@waggeneredstrom.com. Your entry can be in the form of pure text, a photo story, video, slide show or just about anything, so go crazy with your creativity!
The Sony Ericsson Extra Time contest is only open to bloggers in Asia. Please submit your entries before 31st March 2010. The blogger with the most public votes from 1-15 April 2010 will win the contest! You can also email extratime@waggeneredstrom.com for more information.
More details about this once in a lifetime chance here.
I am notoriously bad with directions. I have problems remembering roads and routes and going places is always a chore for me since I have to account for time spent getting lost. >.< I used to get by with handwritten directions scribbled on a piece of paper after a quick consultation with Google Maps but the problem with that is…
…holding a piece of paper in your hand while driving is not exactly what you do if you want to pass a driving exam. 😉
I managed to get my hands on the Garmin-Asus nuvifone M10 courtesy of Kim to test out. Garmin – the King of GPS, on a phone running Windows Mobile 6.5.3!
Alright, I admit I have my doubts about GPS enabled phones so I decided to take this out for a spin.
The Good
The M10 includes a windscreen mount so you can dock it while driving, like a regular GPS
The Better
It also connects to the cigarette lighter thingy in the car and charges the phone while you’re using it!
The Best
The Garmin-Asus nuvifone M10 READS OUT ROAD NAMES
“Keep going on Jalan Sulaiman“
Heh! I love the foreign accent in the M10.
Anyway, as I was saying, I used the M10 to get to this Nepalese food place near Kota Raya. I am suitably impressed with the device – it gets me where I want to go, it’s as good as a dedicated GPS unit and you don’t even have to keep it in your car (coz it’s a cell phone) so you don’t have to worry about walking out to find your side window smashed by some desperate person trying to hock your GPS unit.
This is the 5 MP cam on the phone in action:
Jerine‘s stash of por…er, I mean TV series. 😉
Her early birthday present for me – Macallan 12 year old single malt!
Alright, I know most of you have short attention spans so let me put in point form what I like about the Garmin-Asus nuvifone M10:
This is an engineering review unit – the Garmin-Asus nuvifone M10 will be released on the 25th of March! It’s the best GPS phone I’ve ever seen – and the awesome thing is you have one less gadget to lug around. Integration FTW, it’s the way of the futureeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
All photos taken with the awesome 5 MP cam on the Garmin-Asus nuvifone except the ones which has the phone it in, obviously. 🙂
This person does not have a PADI license so we can either go for the sea walk (closed) or snorkeling. I have a wealth of underwater photos taken which I’m rather proud of, mostly due to the awesome marine life teaming around the islands of Sabah.
This rainbow fish is actually quite delicious but it’s off limits – you know the drill, take nothing but photographs, leave nothing but footprints.
I was submerged for a good 45 minutes swimming around and snapping photos of the corals and fishes around them.
Jerine on the other hand, can’t swim to save her life.
The best thing about Sabah is that the aquatic lifeforms is very tame and not afraid of homo sapiens at all.
Hell, some of them even tried to bite my fingers. >.<
I took a lot of underwater videos too – this is the best of the batch. I only have one word to describe snorkeling in Pulau Sapi – serene. 🙂
Yu Kee Bak Kut Teh is arguably the most famous BKT place in KK. It’s located at Gaya Street. There are two BKT outlets there but the original is the best – you can see the difference with your naked eye, the locals flock to this place like bees to honey.
Yu Kee BKT is always packed while the other…well, it lacks in that department. Jerine also mentioned that she can smell Yu Kee from meters away while the other stall is odorless. She means that in a good way of course, the distinctive aroma of herbs from well cooked BKT.
I like Yu Kee coz I went there to eat straight out of rehab…it was the best meal I ever had considering the crappy food they serve inside. The difference between Kota Kinabalu Bak Kut Teh is that they serve you with small bowls of stuff instead of a huge melting (clay)pot.
Pork intestines
Pork liver
Pork ribs
Pork leg
Pork balls (not the testicular kind, it’s like fish balls but made of oink)
Pork belly (lean)
Mysterious part from a pig – I don’t know what this is
Tofu (no photos coz I DON’T LIKE TOFU!)
Yew Char Kueh in BKT soup
It was a pretty decent dinner but you want my honest opinion? It is the best Bak Kut Teh in KK and I remember loving it the last time I had it. However, those were different times when even an extra piece of chicken was much appreciated. Now that I have life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, it barely warrents a post.
It cost RM 72 for our meal. Do check out Yu Kee Bak Kut Teh if you’re in KK but for good ol’ BKT, go to Klang.
