She’s doing another course of chemotherapy and we’re here for her. My dad flew in too and we’ll usually walk to Hola and eat there. Cheap and decent food. The caterers (old skool Tiffin carriers) come weekday nights.
My mom eats separately; she still can’t stand a lot of food, not even the smell of it. That’s her hiding in the room coz she’s so nauseous from the chemo.
2. Went to church
Took a cab to Bedok Methodist Church. Service is familiar but the praise and worship had an unusual twist – women dressed in traditional Chinese garb were dancing and twirling long silk ribbons. How I wish I managed to take a photo…
Got an EZ-Link card so I could use the MRT, bus and pay for food and groceries at places which accepts it.
3. The Gospel of Pool
Poster stuck beside the pool table at church. Words fail me. Sometimes a cue is just a cue.
Mom got temporarily better and asked me to get her a Mocha soy ice blended drink. I bought it and she had a sip and promptly got sick again.
4. Salted egg yolk mooncakes
Dad got this from Sibu. It’s really quite good, there’s an entire salted egg yolk inside that’s almost the size of the puff pastry.
I ate all of them. Heh.
5. Grocery shopping
Got soy milk for my niece. She’s allergic to nuts, gluten, and most other things. This is the brand that we know doesn’t have any additives or traces of abovementioned. Also got reacquainted with the same brand of cigarettes I smoked last time I was here.
Middle of the night scare from my niece’s talking chair.
6. Timbre @ The Substation
Lovely watering hole at 45, Armenian Street with live bands playing every day of the week. You can text song requests in for them to perform. Fiona recommended the Timbre Buffalo Wings – love the hot sauce and nuts topping but a tad overcooked for me. They do good pizzas too – got a half and half with Goodfellas and 53A. They’re both names of bands playing there.
Here’s a cover of Oasis’ Stand by Me.
7. Left my keys with Fiona
Had a couple of drinks and hung out at Timbre. I put my sister’s condo keys and tag card in her bag earlier that night (tend to chuck my stuff in her tote due to lack of pocket space, thanks Fiona) and forgot to get it back from her. I only realized after I got back and couldn’t go in. Went back to her place to get it.
This is my two month old nephew. He’s named Josiah and weighs 7 kg! 🙂
I love how his folds of baby fat makes him look like a little emperor. Heh. He’s quite heavy for his age, a nice weight to carry around.
…although a pram makes more sense. Haha! I was out shopping with my parents and my sister’s family in Singapore a couple of weeks ago and I can appreciate how hard it is to take care of a baby. I still would love to have one though. 🙂
This here is my niece Kara, who’s all grown up now. She’s almost 3 years old and she can already string a sentence together very cohesively.
She’s already very mature and it never fails to surprise me how fast babies turn into kids. It’s amazing, the thing she says and does, more of what I’ll expect from a 7 year old than a 3 year old. 🙂
This is a breakfast menu item from the fast food franchise giant Jollibee. Jollibee is all around the Philippines, you can literally see one at every street corner in Manila. I had this at the airport just before flying Cebu Pacific Air to Boracay.
The Hash Brown Burger is made with a 100% pure beef patty and a slice of cheese sandwiched between two golden hash browns.
It cost 88 pesos (RM 6.50) at the airport, I’m sure it costs less outside but it’s well worth it.
I love how the crispy hash browns substitute the traditional burger – it’s crunchy on the outside and moist and tender on the inside, which makes the hash browns a much better bun!
It’s delicious stuff! I wish they had it here but I reckon you can make your own using hash browns and removing the patty from a regular burger. 🙂
2. Chinese pao burger with pork sausage
This comes from Chowking, a large fast food franchise specializing in Chinese food in the Philippines. The interesting bit is that they use a Chinese style pao instead of the usual burger buns.
It’s even stamped with a “Ck” for Chowking on top. It looks like a typical burger bun but it’s actually a Chinese pau – the taste and chewy texture is spot on! 🙂
I find that it absorbs the sauces of the ingredients well, but doesn’t over-saturate it – it’s a perfect burger bun substitute!
I had the one with the Chinese pork sausage (lap cheong) inside for 39 pesos (RM 3) inclusive of chicharap (prawn crackers) and a drink right outside Intramuros.
It’s ironically called Chowking’s Chow Pao – which means something totally different if you pronounce it the wrong way. Heh.
This group of fire dancers were performing along the vibrant night life section of White Beach in Boracay – around Station 2.
They’re called the Boracay Phoenix Fire Dancers and I was quite impressed by one of them – she has really good skills.
There were multiple performances – both indoors and outdoors simultaneously, and the latter having no constraints with ceilings and such, could perform aerial tricks.
One of them did an amazing catch after throwing the meteor hammer up in the air – she didn’t catch it the first time, but managed to snag it on the second try. It was the monsoon season so the wind speed was rather fierce, I was amazed she even managed to catch it at all!
The Boracay Phoenix Fire Dancers also lit a lot of cigarettes by spinning the fire dancing apparatus close to the cancer sticks.
…and they also managed to scare a lot of people shitless by spinning the meteor hammers around their faces.
Balut is perhaps the Philippines most notorious street food. It’s an duck egg that’s intentionally unpasteurized to create a fertilized embryo inside it. You can get a near fully formed chick if you’re lucky – complete with beak, feathers and other features you’ll normally associate with a duck.
Well, a duck to be anyway, since it’s been boiled, it’s never going to hatch. 😉
Balut is also known for it’s eww factor with an almost ridiculous aversion bordering on stereotypical squeamishness.
I think there was a Fear Factor episode where the final contestants backed out from eating it. I honestly don’t get what all the fuss is all about – it’s just an egg…with a duck as a bonus. Heh.
I managed to get one that has a relatively intact and grown chick inside, complete with a beak and feathers. I reckon that’s the best kind – crunchy and well, feathery.
The balut is kept in local cardboard insulated wood buckets and wrapped in layers of cloth to keep them warm – it’s quite nasty if you eat it cold coz part of the goodness of balut is the broth that comes out of the egg.
The street venders sell it with a twist of salt in a conical newspaper wrapping – I got 2 balut eggs for 50 pesos (about RM 4). You’re supposed to eat it by cracking open the top of the balut egg, adding salt and slurping out the delicious juices before eating it.
I ate the first one without salt to get a more unadulterated experience and the second one with salt on the advice of the vendor. I preferred eating it without salt, the soup tastes almost exactly like chicken broth, and the half formed duck added a bit of texture and crunchiness to it.
You can see the juices from the balut dripping down my hand in this photo. I’ve eaten balut before, it should have no offensive odors despite a lot of reports claiming otherwise – this is confirmed by a Pinoy friend of mine, who first introduced me to it by bringing it all the way from Manila to Sibu, causing a three day delay before I ate it. Heh.
Here’s a video of me eating it in a hurry (it was a high traffic area) and the associated local bystanders watching with interest and asking if I liked it.
There are a lot of myths associated with balut with claims such as improving male vitality and potency. That will put Pfizer and GSK out of business if it were true. 😉 Similar claims have been made on dog meat, snake blood and bull’s penis. I am inclined to disregard all those and just eat it for the experience and taste.
How does balut taste like? Well it just tastes like a regular boiled egg, except balut has a rich duck broth and a crunchy texture where the half formed chick resides. Xinxian agreed and added that it felt like she was eating egg shells.
I highly recommend that you try balut if you’re ever in the Philippines – it’s delicious in its own way and it’s one of those things that you have to try when you’re there. 🙂
After a long day diving and ATV riding at Boracay, we walked to White Beach to catch the sunset and I somehow managed to get my trusty flip flops stuck in the sand and the right pair finally gave out.
I could still use it by stuffing the bit that got loose back in – this pair has actually been relegated to my balcony back home, but it’s at best a temporary fix. It would come apart again at the slightest provocation, such as walking on the beach, or even sneezing for that matter.
I figured it was time to get new flip flops.
The first shop I went to had one I really liked but unfortunately they were not for sale. It’s a display only item and anyhow, it was soooo large that I could practically *sleep* on it.
I managed to get a pair for 400 pesos (about RM 30) at the next outlet but after I got back to the resort, I realized a little too late that it was slightly too big for me. 🙁
I’ve been having trouble with one of my molars for a while now – it really hurts to chew but the pain suddenly went away one day so I thought it was fine.
I was eating dinner at a local fast food restaurant in Intramuros, Manila where we had spent the day when I suddenly felt something crack inside my mouth. (!)
My initial thought was that it’s probably a stray bone, and I didn’t feel any pain so I ponderously chewed while attempting to spit the foreign object out. It looked harmless enough at first sight, until I ran my tongue along my left lower jaw and felt a hole with sharp jagged edges.
I have chipped my tooth! 🙁
I thought I’ll just get it fixed and since there wasn’t any pain, I figured I’ll just use the right side of my teeth to do the usual job of grinding food into manageable mush to swallow.
Unfortunately, about half an hour later, I felt a tingling sensation – the nerve endings in my gums are exposed!
That’s not too bad either, but later as we caught a cab back to the hotel I started to feel the onset of a headache of epic proportions. I used to suffer from migraines but it doesn’t have the characteristic warning signs of an impending one – it’s sensitivity to light for me.
I didn’t think much of it until I got a better look at my teeth. I was complaining about a headache of mysterious origin and suddenly it occurred to us that it could be due to the broken tooth. I don’t know if it’s infected or the massive migraine that I’m currently having is due to the exposed raw nerve endings on my gum but I’ve never had one this bad before.I just feel like puking, crawling into bed and curling up in a fetal position.
I am very thankful to Maestro Smiles of Cinnaminson that they cured both my teeth and pain. They are focused and dedicated for providing exceptional family and cosmetic dentistry services. They provide both restorative and preventive maintenance dentistry services for their patients.
That just sounds downright dodgy eh? Heh. This photo was taken at around 3 am in the morning. There’s a rather funny story about how we got here from drinks at Orchard Road in Singapore.
…rewind to about 8 hours earlier
I met up with Fiona for dinner – it turns out that she lives quite near my sister’s apartment in Simei. Thus, we met at Eastpoint Mall. She got there about the same time I did and called me saying she doesn’t know if she’s at the right entrance – it’s at the place where there’s a lot of lingerie if you are going to buy ask yourself what is the average breast size and so buy the best for me!.
I pretty much knew where that was since I came to the mall the day before with my parents to the supermarket downstairs. 🙂
Anyway, Fiona is a flight attendant and I’ve known her since her words of encouragement when I was being all emo and shit after the last relationship I was in. I haven’t actually met her though so I only have a vague idea of how she looked like from my Facebook account.
We took a cab to Orchard Road and told the taxi we didn’t have any destination in mind, so he dropped us off somewhere near…er, I can’t actually remember. I know we walked for a bit and checked out the drinking holes around the Peranakan Place area before settling on Alley Bar.
It has the most awesome pork burger ever! It’s called the BBQ Pulled Pork Burger and it’s a juicy and tender mess of 5 hours of smoked pork shoulder smothered in barbecue sauce, topped with a whole jalapeno chili pepper.
Fiona had a bite and she concurred. Actually eating it is a messy affair – it’s like a sloppy joe except it’s not made with minced meat but rather loose meat. It’s the best pork burger I’ve had to date!
We were seated outside at a place simply called Outdoors – Peranakan Place has three distinct areas built around a real Peranakan settlement. Outdoors is the al fresco zone which is a “Designated Smoking Area” (damn Singaporean laws) and there’s also Acid Bar and Alley Bar, which is the main place.
There’s a live band playing – the music is piped to Outdoors for those who’re not inside, loved this cover of Radiohead’s Creep.
I had two pints of Erdinger Beer – there are two, one dark and one white. The “dark” one is Pikantus and the “light” Weissbier. We were eating, drinking and talking and it was around 11:30 pm when the subject somehow changed to pool and Fiona found a place that’s open until 3 am.
We walked down the opposite direction at first before the GPS on her phone told us we’re heading the wrong way so we turned back. The pool place is at Concorde Hotel – somehow that place looks really seedy, it’s full of KTV hostess bars and dodgy characters loitering about who look like they would totally mug you if this was Malaysia instead of Singapore. HAHAHA
It turns out that Fiona is quite good at pool. I wouldn’t say that she kicked my ass but it was a really close thing. Tomatoe tomato.
Speaking of asses, Fiona is left handed, which I didn’t notice until we were playing. I was standing behind her trying to see how she plays. I thought she would think that I was checking out her butt. It turns out that she didn’t, she’s probably used to people ogling at her as cabin crew. :p
See what I did there?
It’s a masterful (wah damn syoik sendiri) way of neither confirming nor denying the statement, just like how Israel’s nuclear ambiguity works, except bombs and butts are two very different things.
Anyway, they don’t sell beer inside, and we were alternately playing pool and 9 ball before I suggested we head to the 7-Eleven outside to get some. It wasn’t a 7-11, it’s a similar concept called Cheers (how apt) and I told her to just scull the 500 ml can before we head inside. It’s a strong beer at 9% and you don’t exactly drink it for the taste.
Look at Fiona’s apprehensive face! 😉
I think we spent more than the 5 minutes we told the pool hall clerk we’ll be away outside, downing that beer and smoking in the rather unusual backdrop of closed shops, dark segments and KTV bars.
We went and played until it was nearly three before heading out for more beer. This time we brought it inside using Fiona’s bag, and using the same to discreetly conceal the two cans by putting it behind and out of sight. That was the first picture. Smart.
The place was supposed to close at 3 am but we were still playing so the clerk started cleaning up. I don’t think he cared about the alcohol anyway, we were the only customers in there at the time. Thanks for the beers Fiona! 🙂
It was 4:30 am when we finally shared a cab home. I could only spare one night coz I’m here for my mom so I only went out once. I had a lot of fun, one of the more memorable night outs in a long time despite only getting two hours of sleep two nights in a row to wake up for church. Say hi to Fiona if you see her while flying!
Kota Tua is loosely translated as “Old Town” and it’s the old part of Jakarta. It’s also known as Old Batavia and you can still see the scars of the 1998 riots here – burned buildings are still around and refurbishment hasn’t touched most of it yet.
We were staying at a hotel just nearby and one morning, Jazz woke me up to experience the place. The streets were closed on that day, due to a function that’s happening on the square.
It was the event itself that caused the closure of the streets – it’s called Hari Bebas Kenderaan Bermotor Kawasan Kota Tua 2012 which translates to “(Motorized) Vehicle Free Day (in) Kota Tua Area 2012”. Heh.
Kota Tua is bordered by a canal called Kali Besar which is famous for its overpowering stench. I could smell it, but it wasn’t anywhere as bad as I was told.
The beauty of Kota Tua Jakarta lies in its vibrant community of stalls and buskers – there were people playing various musical instruments and I even saw an improvised percussion system made of glass bottles nestled on a wood frame!
This is one of the refurbished buildings – their post office. It’s part of their efforts at making this historical town into a UNESCO heritage site.
It is primarily a tourist attraction with it’s souvenir stalls – there’s also a theater called Museum Wayang there that plays traditional Indonesian Wayang Kulit (a shadow play with puppets).
Several vendors also offers rides on pimped up (or rather dolled up) bicycles for two, complete with flowery hats.
However, it’s definitely worth a visit – you can catch a local puppet show or grab a snack from a roadside stall. I had Otak Otak Ikan which is completely different from the soggy fish paste we get here.
The Indonesian version of otak otak is crispy and eaten with a chilli paste. It’s cheap street food, I think I paid less than RM 1 for this.
Kota Tua Jakarta has something for everyone. It’s called Old Jakarta for a reason – a lot of history and heritage can be found in this area. I’ll allocate at least half a day for a proper visit, and a full day if you want to pop into all the museums and catch a wayang kulit show.
…or you can just sit at one of the cafes and watch the vibrant scenes – families at play, people collecting discarded cans for recycling money, old men chatting animatedly while standing around in loose circles.
The glass building behind us is actually a factory for assembling Volkswagen Phaeton. It only does that and the cars you can see are all spoken for – they’re just awaiting for the owner to pick it up. We went on a tour of the transparent assembly plant in Dresden as part of our trip and it was surprisingly interesting!
This is our English speaking guide – you must have a guide with you when you tour the VW transparent factory and no photos are allowed inside.
You can hear her speak a little here.
However, you can take photos outside of the assembly area. This entire factory assembles Volkswagen Phaetons only. It’s fully customizable in Dresden, Germany. This is where people come to buy a Phaeton – you’re guided to an area where you can choose everything from the color of the car to the interior features and get your own customized VW Phaeton.
I was rather astounded by the sheer cleanliness of the factory – it’s totally unlike any other factory I’ve ever been to before. The employees even have white overalls that are spotless! I don’t know how the Germans do it but we could learn a thing or two from them.
The interesting thing about this factory is that it’s one-of-a-kind. The buyer experience it offers and the tall glass building combined with the robots makes this unique. There are automated carts that follows a magnetic path (which can be changed) along the factory floor so parts will be available to the staff when needed.
You’ll probably be wondering how they get the cars out of the tall transparent building – it’s automated! There’s a car lift that goes up to the floor you want and rotates to the segment you want to extract a particular car (always a Phaeton since that’s what this factory produces). Very nifty.
There’s also a huge sphere where you can watch commercials, old ads and so forth – watch out for the latest one, it’s quite funny and targeted towards the Asian market since it’s the largest market now. The Volkswagen Phaeton transparent factory is worth a visit if you’re ever in Dresden. It’s a remarkable example of German efficiency and one of the attractions in Dresden – it’s the only transparent factory of this scale here.
I don’t think the Volkswagen Phaeton luxury sedan is coming to Malaysia in it’s current form e.g. infinitely customizable so purchasing the car is an experience in itself. However, it might be coming (don’t quote me on this) in several preset models – check out the Volkswagen Malaysia Facebook page and ask, they’re more qualified to speak about this than me. 🙂
