Just: The new way to enjoy wine

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just wine display

The Just label is not well known for wine…at least I haven’t heard
of it, until I saw this display at the Jusco supermarket. The
attractive features of the Just wine display is the unconventional wine
bottle size, the wide range of varieties available and the affordable
price at RM 8.50 per bottle.

just wine display close

Just seems to be a new label and has an interesting tagline which goes Just: The new way to enjoy wine.
The small Just wine bottles are color coded based on the type of wine
it contains – there are various options of red and white wine.

just cinsault merlot

I couldn’t resist the interesting bottles and grabbed two different
ones, a Merlot and a Cinsault. The bottles have easy screw on “metal
corks” (otherwise known as covers) and thus can be appreciated without
having to purchase a corkscrew. Just wine is a produce of France.

just merlot

The Merlot is described as “a round and balanced Merlot with aromas
of ripe fruits” and weighs in at 12.5% alcohol. It tasted alright, but
I’m no wine connoisseur so I can’t be more descriptive than that,
unless I sprout some pretentious bullshit about the wine being “naughty
to the palate at the beginning, with an aftertaste that caresses the
tongue with warm notes of oak” or something to that effect. 😉

just cinsault

The Cinsault has a label that describes it as “a consistently fresh
and aromatic Cinsault with delicate aromas of red fruits”. I’ve never
heard of the word Cinsault before, but it tasted like a rose wine. This
one comes in at a slightly more satisfying 13% alcohol. I had it at
room temperature, and it tasted alright nevertheless.

just new wine

Just: The new way to enjoy wine!

Promegranate fruit

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promegranate fruits

The promegranate fruit, sometimes spelled as pomegranate, is a seed
based fruit that I’ve seen around in Australia and Malaysia, but never
got around to trying it, not being a big fan of fruits.

promegranate fruit

I got one of them to eat just now though – it retails for RM 3.59
per fruit and the promegranate fruit originates from India. It looks
rather like an onion with its bulbous shape and flared ends – a large,
reddish onion.

promegranate half

The pomegranate fruit is filled with red seed pulps in segments much
like the pomelo fruit. I was told that only the seeds are edible, and
not the skin.

promegranate eaten

Much like the pomelo fruit, the pitted areas around the skin and
segments tastes bitter, but the seeds have a slightly muted
tartness…muted being the keyword here. I found the fruit rather
bland, to be honest, and didn’t find eating it fresh particularly
interesting, though I imagine it would go well in other preparations.

Food Junction @ Midvalley Megamall – Western Food

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mm food junction

Food Junction is the food court located at MidValley Megamall which
I’ve been frequenting due to the close proximity to the hotel I’m
staying at (it’s just next door).

mm western food

There is a Western Food section on the entrance of the food court – there are several themed food eateries at the place.

mm western counter

The Western Food category has displays of their menu repertoire in a
visual format, which I found to be very useful in gauging which of the
dishes is likely to be good.

mm western display 1

This is the first row of the food dishes that this section offers…

mm western display 2

The second row is also filled with cooked dishes on the second tier, with condiments on the bottom one…

mm western display 3

The third row has both tiers filled with food.

mm spag seafood

This is the Seafood and Spaghetti with Cream Sauce (RM 15.90) that my CTO ordered…it looks creamy and nice, and has several prime seafood items on the dish too.

mm baked seafood

I went for the Baked Seafood (RM 19.90) which was
recommended as one of their specialties. I was not disappointed…it
was spicy, with tones of garlic and the toppings were piled on – more
prime seafood: prawns, large mussels, smaller mussels, squid…the
works!

Soon Fatt Beijing Roasted Duck

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soon fatt beijing duck stall

Soon Fatt Beijing Roasted Duck is a popular roadside stall in Jalan
Pasar (Market Road) in Pudu, KL. I went there for a late lunch with a
couple of people. The ad hoc seating arrangements of plastic chairs and
tables were packed full of people, from, dare I say it…all walks of
life.

soon fatt beijing duck close

The stall front has displays of whole duck and other meats and the
front is adorned with a newspaper clipping which shows the stall in a
paper write-up. Adhering to the all-in-one stall design, steamed rice
containers, soup cauldrons, tea kettles are all within easy reach and
the wash basin is in close proximity with the back. Nifty,
self-contained roadside stall design…

soon fatt beijing duck

This is the main platter that we ordered – there’s a thigh of their
renowned Beijing Roasted Duck, as well as a cut of breast meat,
together with sweet meat and deep fried pork under a bed of nice gravy
and sprinkled with stalks of spring onions. It comes with a serving of
rice and soup…and the duck tasted good.

Cititel Mid Valley Hotel, KL

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cititel kl water

It’s a good thing that the drinking water is complimentary…like
most hotels, they have their own drinking water, and the guests have
complimentary breakfast at Citi Cafe every morning too. The lobby area
and Citi Cafe has Wi-Fi access, but I opted to use my Digi EDGE
connection to my notebook since the AP down there is RM 30 for 2
hours…which I would have gone for, if I don’t have an existing free
connection. 😉 It’s also notable that this is the first trip in which
sixthseal.com updates in real time, thanks to my notebook and GPRS/EDGE
cell phone.

cititel kl room card

I’m staying on the 20th floor of Cititel, Mid Valley. It’s a smoking
floor and I’m in room 2006 – please feel free to ring the doorbell at
odd hours of the night if you’re so inclined, but I’m likely to be out
the whole day. 😉

cititel kl stalk

The view from the 20th floor is great – it feel good to be in KL
again…I was walking around Mid Valley just now and have been to bsc
and other places earlier during the day. KL feels like the place for
me…I’m not sure why, it just feels like the right place for someone like me to be living in. 🙂

Fatimah Restaurant, Negeri Sembilan

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fatimah restaurant ns

This is a 24 hour place in Negeri Sembilan – Fatimah Restaurant. I
noticed that we were passing signs that ends not in KL but in N.S.
(Negeri Sembilan). Our client/companion confirmed that we had indeed
crossed into another state, which explains the long drive…but
“crossing into another state” in Sarawak takes much longer than in Peninsula Malaysia. 😉

fatimah ns dish

Fatimah Restaurant is located on the way back from Port Dickson and
is under the jurisdiction of Majlis Perbandaran Port Dickson (MPPD),
which was the first sign that we weren’t in DBKL territory anymore. I
had nasi campur (chose the nasi kuning (yellow rice)), with nice, spicy ayam masak merah, curry kambing, and udang pedas. It was somewhere between Lukut and Sepang, I believe…it took several hours of driving…

It’s my first review of a place in Negeri Sembilan. 😉

Japanese choco mochi with peanut fillings

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ff mochi peanut trio

I got these from ff (see post below) during the weekend – it’s from
Japan, and since I can’t read the script, except the Romanized “choco”
word, I thought it would just be perfect for a sweet ending to the
dinner I just had. I’m in the habit of eating something sweet after a
salty meal…

ff mochi peanut single

Closer scrutiny reveals a photo of mochi – the glutinous rice based
food, and this looks a lot like the ones we eat at the paternal side of
the family during the festival. The maternal side makes it into a soup,
while we eat it dry, with either colored sugar (red), finely grounded
peanuts (optionally mixed with brown sugar) or both. There is an
outline of a peanut on the wrapper, so I figured I’m in for a treat.

ff mochi peanut open

There are two wrappers – the outer decorative one the inner
protective one, which reveals a confectionary that looks like toffee. I
took a bite of it…

ff mochi peanut bite

…and it has that melt-in-your mouth, saliva inducing soft and
chewy texture of mochi together with a peanut jelly filling which
tastes like peanuts. The integration of different and unexpected
textures is impressive – I couldn’t help but eat all of them.

It tastes more like toffee than chocolate, but they’re both cool with me, so it’s all good. 🙂

Anyway, I’m going to pack now – will be going on the 7 am flight out
of Kuching tomorrow and I’ll be staying at Cititel Hotel, Mid Valley
(the one just beside it) while I’m in KL.

Meeting e from LA and fish_fish from Japan in Kuching

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I managed to meet up with e and fish_fish over the weekend, despite
the hectic schedule at work. I got around to meeting up with them
during a break at Da Lai near King Center. This is a photo of us in
16:9 aspect ratio:

e fish_fish me

L-R: e [cooknengr.com], who is strictly heterosexual, as he informs me ;), fish_fish [blogspot.com], with a policy of not revealing herself in photos (it’s true – check her blog), and me.

e stuff

e kindly gave me some stuff from LA – Everclear high proof grain
alcohol, a can of Coors Light and two types of smokeless tobacco.
Thanks! I shall review them individually.

ff stuff

ff also brought back some stuff from Japan for me – a giant Kobe
Wine flavored Pocky which is only available in that prefecture in
Japan, Ramune – the drink with that push down ball, 5 packs of
different Japanese cigarettes from a vending machine and candy. Cheers!
I’m going to enjoy reviewing these.

My apologies for the late posting, have a lot on my plate at work.
I’ll be flying to KL early tomorrow morning and will be staying in a
hotel there. It’s a business trip, so I probably will be busy, but if
anyone wants to hook up, you can always try 016 869 0110. See ya!

The photo that locked me out of the car

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photo car lockout

This is a picture taken just now at the landmark Jalan Padungan cat
statue. It’s wearing CNY clothes, so I decided to pull up beside it to
get a shot before the clothes are taken down. The locality of this
Kuching cat statue is right beside a roundabout, but I figured that it
would take all of 5 seconds to take a photo, so I just got out in the
middle of the road.

This is the same flawed logic that got me an obstruction of traffic
ticket (which is still outstanding) while I popped into the local
7-Eleven “for a couple of minutes”.

I did manage to take several shots of the festive cat statue in less
than 30 minutes and walked back…to see the car engine still running,
with the doors closed and locked. This didn’t look right, but it took
another 5 seconds to realize that I’ve somehow locked myself out of a running car parked in the middle of a busy roundabout at night.

My first thought was to break the driver side window, figuring that
it wouldn’t cost as much as the other windows to regain access to the
locked car, so I wrapped my hand with excess shirt material and
forcibly hit the window…

…which didn’t even produce a hairline crack. That’s a good thing
in hindsight; coz the shattering glass would probably necessitate a
quick trip to the hospital.

I looked around and found a fire station about 50 meters away.
Salvation! The Fire and Rescue Department would have something heavy to
break windows with.

I walked over and told the amused firemen about my predicament. The
head was aghast at the fact that I wanted to break the window to gain
quick access (had to meet someone) and offered to jimmy the lock for
me. I’ve thought about that too, but I haven’t really had much practice
doing it, considering grand theft auto wasn’t one of my career path
considerations…

Thus, the firemen trooped down to the roundabout. Imagine the sight
of about 13 firemen gathering around a car to force the lock open. It
was a sight to behold, I imagine…

fireman open car door

It just took 2 minutes for them to flip the lock and open the
passenger side door. I thanked the firemen and offered to buy them a
drink, which they accepted.

I learnt how to break into a locked car in 2 minutes flat today. Thanks firemen! 😉

Big nuts

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japan big nuts

I have a bag of really big nuts. No, it’s not what you think, but
thanks, I have a set of really big nuts too. 😉 I’ve been told that I’m
a little nuts as well, but that’s besides the point and the wordplay is
getting cheesy.

japan big nuts logo

The product I’m referring to though is this bag of big assorted
nuts. It’s made in Japan and retails for RM 19.50 for a large packet of
individually wrapped assorted nuts. I brought it to the office today.

japan big nuts five

The packaging on these snacks is very aesthetically pleasing, as
with most products originating from Japan. The packs are ingeniously
shaped like a pyramid, and opening it makes the packet “flat” for
easier extraction of nuts. There are five different varieties of nuts
and snacks in the pack.

japan big nuts green

The first packet is green and since I can’t read Japanese, I can’t
say for sure what kind of nuts it contains, but inference from taste
and sight suggest that it’s not a common nut.

japan big nuts green nuts

Here’s a look inside the green packet. I’m not sure what this
particular variety of nut is called…I’ve had them before, and it’s
not cashew nuts, peanuts, macadamia nuts or pistachios. It’s a crumbly
sort of nut with a lingering texture that sticks after you’re done
chewing them.

japan big nuts pink

The second packet is pink and the nuts on the packet illustration shows a familiar sight.

japan big nuts pink nuts

It’s peanuts with a twist – the nuts are coated with a sweet and
sticky substance and have dried seaweed (nori) pieces on it. It tastes
good, nori and peanuts naturally go well together.

japan big nuts yellow

This is the yellow pack and it’s the first to feature a non-nut product.

japan big nuts yellow nuts

The contents feature deep fried rice puffs with the same sweet
coating that’s on the peanuts pack. This is the best one from the pack.

japan big nuts blue

Next up is the blue colored pack, which contains another non-nut product.

japan big nuts blue nuts

It’s filled with long snacks which tastes really bland. It’s also
made from deep fried rice based flour and has bits of what seems like
peanut skin in it. Unlike the other pack contents, this one is neither
salty nor sweet…it’s just…bland.

japan big nuts orange

The last pack is orange colored and it’s a mix of nuts and snacks.

japan big nuts orange nuts

There are plain salted peanuts inside as well as deep fried salty
rice sticks. It’s a nice, if common, integration of nuts and snacks.

There are some good offerings in the big nuts pack, but the best
thing about the snack pack is in the presentation – it just looks good.
🙂

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