Everything and everyone is fishy

Blind is an extremely interesting drama. The plot twists and turns, and red herrings are dropped relentlessly, making us focus on multiple characters as suspects. However, I am not sure whether I can call it "good". I would have preferred it if they dropped the red herrings together, instead of focusing on one person’s suspicious movements at a time and then clearing that character before moving on to another person’s suspicious movements.

I like that they tied up a lot of loose ends. Many small things were explained here and there as the story unfolded.

But the story was a little far-fetched…and maybe because it was too complicated, some parts were not fully explained. For example, how much, exactly, was in the mastermind’s original plan?

I also don’t like how they did not explain how exactly the kid got adopted in the first place. (not saying anything more because it might be a spoiler)

Anyway, I just discovered Ha Seok Jin. *starry-eyes* In my eyes, he is practically the main lead here. Sorry, Taecyeon.

I like Park Ji Bin too, though I’ll most likely forget his name…I first saw him in The Killer’s Shopping List (the one with good make-up skills). He’s got an awesome smile for this character.

Team cheer!

Because this week's photo theme was hands...

And here's the "behind the scenes" pic. :P

Duffy can't sit up straight! Haha...

(I wanted to hide my index finger's nail which is still stained from the election's ink, so I couldn't move my hand further in. At least this was enough to keep the other hands in place... :P )

Ginseng chicken

There is this Korean ginseng flame-grilled chicken shop that opened at Golden Triangle quite some time ago. It is half a shop lot, and I did not have much faith in it, so I had been waiting to see whether it would last, before deciding to go and try it.

Recently I looked it up on Google Maps, since it has been quite long since it opened. The reviews are all pretty good. So I went and got myself a set.

The lady at the cashier put the "Sam Gye Bab" sticker on top right before putting it into a plastic bag for me. That is the shop's name and logo.

Inside, besides the chicken and the rice, there was kimchi, a red date (right beside the kimchi), a piece of shiitake mushroom (that whitish piece on the left), and some "chilli" sauce. I'm guessing that it is the same sauce used to grill the chicken. It wasn't exactly spicy.

The taste was pretty good, though not exceptional. (I feel like I say this quite a lot :P )

I was actually surprised that the rice was glutinous rice...after that a friend told me that sam gye tang (Korean ginseng chicken soup) also has glutinous rice stuffed into the chicken. I didn't know that either! Haven't tried sam gye tang before.

Going home

In the office a friend asked me, "Are you going home tonight?"

I stared back at him and replied, "I'm not sleeping here tonight!"

Sometimes it's more fun to pretend we don't understand. :P

He meant "home" as in back to Kuantan...it was easy to understand because it is election weekend and plenty of people are going home to vote. But my trip back will be the following week, thankfully!

Dots on a roof

Because this week's theme was dots!

The amazing tailgater

The other day I saw the worst tailgater ever (or the best, depending on how you look at it).

I hadn’t left my house long when I found that this car was following me very closely. (And at that point, there’s only one apartment it could have come from…though I won’t say which.) I tried stepping the brake slightly, not enough to actually brake, but it should have been enough to light up the brake lights…but the car behind me didn’t slow down. Then I got to a wider road, where I had planned to let it pass, but another car was coming in to my lane in front of me, so I slowed down behind it, with the car behind me still tailgating.

Once I got some space between myself and the car in front (it was slow at first because it had just come out of a junction), I moved to the left and let the tailgater pass. Then of course, the tailgater started following the other car closely.

After we reached the main road, I saw the tailgater overtake that car, but somehow a few traffic lights later, I found the tailgater behind me again (and of course, still following closely). This time I could let him pass quite quickly, and after that I was treated to the amazing spectacle of him following every car in front of him closely.

Usually when there is smooth traffic, we would see cars spaced out on the road. In this case, when he was in front of me, I had a nice gap between his car and mine, but he would be following the next car closely. Several times there was one car between his and mine, and there I would see nice gaps in front of my car and in front of the car in front of mine…and in front of the tailgater there would be practically no space. It was like seeing two cars glued together, looking like they were parked, except that they were moving! (of course, this is the view from behind the cars, but I’m really curious how it looked from the side :P )

This went along until we reached the highway, then I lost sight of the tailgater. (I was on my way to work…people who know my route will be able to figure things out)

By the way, there were times when I was driving right behind the tailgater, and even stopped behind him at a traffic light. There was a Snorlax in the back of his car! Why don’t you learn from your snoozing Snorlax and chill out a bit?!

Inconsistent hotel service

We stayed at Hampton by Hilton, near Alexanderplatz. It was about a 10-minute walk to Alexanderplatz (one end of it!) The other end would be maybe another 15 minutes away....

Since the only photo I had posted of the hotel was for Photo Friday, here are more:

Personally, I like the room. Very cosy. The bad part is that they didn’t provide a fridge.

view out the window

Windows can only be opened slightly for air. No sticking our heads out. I guess they were worried we would jump out.

I like the body lotion :)

looking up to the room from outside (this "park" does not belong to the hotel)

On the left should be a normal residential building.

They had a gym (I think they called it a fitness center), which I did not use.

At the end of the photo, you can see that towels are provided. There is also a water dispenser. (That is right at the entrance)

Then there was a really cute thing on the inside of the elevator door... :P

I didn't dare snap a photo when there were people around...

Then there's this weird thing: Almost every day, they would exchange a new towel for us (both the small towel and the bath towel). Sometimes they would leave the old one but add new ones...it was not very consistent, probably depended on who was cleaning the room on that day.

In any case, it wasn’t until the last day that I found these tiny towels (face towels?) placed on the small towel beside the sink (usually only the small towel is placed there). I had no idea why…

Oktoberfest beer and pork knuckles

As was the case when I went to Munich, I tried pork knuckle when I was in Berlin.

Actually this time it wasn’t a must-try any more…but when I mentioned that I liked Augustiner beer and would look for it, my friend told me that there was an Augustiner restaurant in Berlin. (There was also one in Potsdam, as I discovered later) So we went there one day after work.

Since it was Oktoberfest season, the restaurant was fully booked for at evening. The waiter even told us, “It’s Friday, it's Oktoberfest, and we’re too famous.” Even though it’s an arrogant phrase, I wouldn’t argue with that…

He went so far as to tell us that there were other restaurants nearby; for example Erdinger, which we had passed on our way there, and Maximilians.

We had seen Erdinger tables earlier (the restaurant is across the street).

The tables were just beside (or in front of?) the Französischer Dom.

Actually there were these three buildings in a row, and I snapped these photos without knowing what the buildings were:

Deutscher Dom

The concert house in the middle, and Französischer Dom

Looking back at my old Berlin post, I realize that I had visited them before as a tourist (this trip, I was not planning any touristy stuff in Berlin itself). No prizes for guessing which German name corresponds to the “German” and “French” Doms.

We decided to go to Maximilians because my friend had tried Erdinger before (at least I think that was the reason…I may have remembered wrongly :P )

Big guy welcoming us to the restaurant. Haha.

This restaurant serves Hacker-Pschorr beer, which is one of the six big breweries of Munich (you can see it on the coaster in my old post about the beer tour).

A book of Oktoberfest beers for us to choose from. We both chose this one, the basic Oktoberfest special.

It seems that they specially brew different beers for Oktoberfest, that are not available during other times of the year. I had no idea until my friend told me.

My half-litre glass of beer.

Taking a photo with my friend’s one-litre glass. The logo is on the opposite side of the handle, so we cannot see it here.

Our pork knuckle

From a different angle, so that we can see the sauce.

The pork knuckle’s skin was unfortunately not that crispy…it was quite hard. The sauerkraut was not bad, not too sour, and the little pieces of meat in it gave it a nice taste. The dumplings were…meh. Nothing special. Being quite small eaters, we couldn’t finish the dish, not even after we decided to give up on the dumplings and focus on the meat.

As for the beer, it was quite good. I think Augustiner is still smoother, but this is one that I could enjoy.

So that was it for Maximilians…but wait! Didn’t I mention that I was going to drink Augustiner?

That was the main target…and still was. In fact, before we left Augustiner, we asked the waiter to make us a reservation. He actually kept telling us it was fully booked, probably because we didn’t speak German and he expected we were tourists who were only there for a day or two. But we kept asking when was the first date there was a spot for us (It was only our first week there…we had three more weeks in which we could reserve, including weekdays if necessary. Was it really booked up for so long?). So we made our reservation and went there another day. 

(Actually later we found out that we could make a reservation through their website, or even through Google Maps. The website seems to be only in German, but the reservation widget is available in multiple languages)

In case you are interested, here is Augustiner, and you can see the other two restaurants just nearby. We arrived at U-Hausvogteiplatz, and after eating at Maximilians, we left from U-Stadtmitte.

The famous Augustiner

The menu. It seems that I started taking a photo of the last page and moved back to the front. I guess that’s normal…that is after all the most important page. :P

I opted for the first beer, which I expected (and I think I was correct) to be the one that I had before, while my friend took an Oktoberfest special which was on a separate menu card. Somehow I didn’t take a photo of that seasonal beer list.

Mine on the left, Oktoberfest beer in a special glass on the right. This time he took half a litre, so that he could try another kind later if he wished.

The pork knuckle. The presentation is not as nice as Maximilians'.

We managed to finish more of this one. The skin was also crispier, though not all parts were crispy.

And then there was the opening of a new barrel of beer… turns out that it is quite an important occasion. My friend said something about the beer being more fragrant when it is from a newly-opened barrel. I doubt that I would be able to taste the difference… :P 

There is a bell being tinkled when it is time to open a new barrel, and then people actually move up to watch. We had heard the bell in Maximilians as well, but at that time we were seated too far away to see anything. Here we could see quite clearly what was going on.

You can see that people are clapping as the new barrel is being opened.

A glass of beer on the newly-opened barrel... I dunno how that works because to me, that is too much foam. :P

So how was the beer? As good as I remember. :D

I even thought of going back one day just for the beer (maybe we could have ordered a smaller dish, like just a snack). But that turned out to be unnecessary, because my friend discovered Augustiner beer in supermarkets.

If not mistaken, it costs around €1.90 per bottle.

There are so many different types of beers in the supermarkets, and some are from the big six (those top six breweries I mentioned), and some are even Oktoberfest beers. And I’ve got to say that even though I love the taste of Augustiner, the bottle itself is the ugliest. I mentioned this to my friend and he agreed…he said that he just suddenly noticed that it was Augustiner. And guess what - after knowing what the bottle looked like, we started noticing that many food shops sell this beer (it’s in their beer fridges), and lots of people actually drink it sitting in parks or beside rivers.

And to drink it in my room, since our hotel room doesn’t come with a fridge, I asked for ice at the bar downstairs, and made my own ice bath for my beer. :P

Giant pots

I’ve written about this China ramen stall before. Not too long after we discovered it at the Sg Ara food court, it moved to Lucky Eatery in Relau. Much nearer to us! :D

This week, I thought of it while trying to find a subject for the photo theme, which was giant.

I recalled the giant pot!

Upon reaching the stall, I realized that there were two pots (I only remembered the bigger one…or maybe they added a second one later?) So I included both of them in my photo.

Note: I don't think I've seen it myself, but when I found out about this stall from online articles, they mentioned that inside those huge pots are actually small pots of the soup that they sell. They sell Chinese herbal soups besides the ramen that I mentioned.

Champagne on a plane

This will be the last of the posts about airports and flights! (excluding the Copenhagen trip…but that part wasn’t business class, so it is totally different :P ) Finally we reach the part about Qatar Airways…and it is seriously impressive.

The business class seat itself already had me in awe.

Just look at that compartment!

Legs will stretch under the TV

Water and headphones in the storage compartment

And there is a door for privacy!

Below is my favourite photo from the flight.

This is the life…

I requested champagne, and chose the rosé (there were normal and rosé kinds) It came with the small bowl of nuts. The nuts were awesome…they were WARM, and there were also some cashewnuts and pistachios besides the almonds you see here. I just regretted not having more on the flight back, but there were already too many things to eat…as you will see later.

As we enjoyed our drinks, we took a few photos of us sitting in our compartments. I discovered that the windows could be adjusted to be tinted (there were about five levels of tinting), and I like this photo because it shows my windows tinted, while my friend’s (behind me) are clear.

And the food is soooo good.

The menu had dedicated pages to describe each wine/liquor offering. I did not snap those because there were too many!

After they laid the table.

seared beef

Was wondering whether there was a real flame inside :P It's a fake, but hey, it's still a flame! (and not a round lightbulb)

Laying out the utensils from the napkin. Comparable to MAS, there were six utensils.

The beef was good, and the bread also tasted quite good, except for the crust which was not so soft. I pulled out all the insides and ate it with butter. Another note: The bread was warm too!

lobster thermidor

The lobster thermidor was extremely good… the pasta was however all clumped together. No matter, even it had tasted awesome, I was already too full to eat much of it. I think I probably didn’t even finish one-tenth of the pasta, I just pushed it here and there to make it look like I ate some.

I ordered some Leffe (beer). I had heard the name before, and looking it up now, it’s a Belgian beer. It was not bad. Nowhere close to Augustiner (which I’ve mentioned before and which we’ll come to again later)…but already quite good.

Found that they had de-clawed the lobster for us.

Chocolate passion fruit cake for dessert

The passion fruit is in there!

Later I discovered that they had forward and downward cameras that we could look at.

Nothing much to see while we were up in the sky…so I didn’t look again until we were approaching Berlin.

I entertained myself with the cameras again when we were landing in Qatar on our return trip.

This view is from the window of the plane.

Back to the plane to Berlin… When we were about to land, they gave us a small box of chocolates.

I agree :P

Maybe you didn’t notice, but in the first photo, you could see something placed in the compartment for us. There was a “protective kit”, similar to the “hygiene kit” from MAS. Then there was also a gift bag/pouch. It seems that they have different designs…my friend got an all-black one. I’m glad mine was this one, I find it prettier. :)

Besides the usual eye-cover and stockings, they also included lotion and eau de toilette. I think I already mentioned in the post about the Qatar lounge that their lotion is amazing. I’m loving this gift bag. It’s now in my cupboard and the smell is amazing every time I open the cupboard. :D

This post is already quite long, but I think I will go ahead and finish it with the return trip. Since some things are similar, there won’t be as many things to say about it…

The gift was different this time; it was a box! In the box, the items were similar as in the pouch earlier. But the eye-cover and stockings are pink! ♥

A drink while we wait for others to board.

My friend also took champagne, and asked to clink glasses. And here I think this photo is lovely. It’s my second favourite photo from the Qatar flight.

But now I look at it, I might not have been holding the champagne glass “properly”. :P

After that, looking for something to try from the drinks menu, I decided to ask for port. I asked for just a little, to try. And I guess it was the right thing to do, because I found that I didn’t like it.

This is the menu on the return flight. The drinks menu was the same as before.

I asked for the poached lobster and salmon. So I was surprised when I was served this sushi-like item.

I couldn’t find it on the menu, so I wasn’t being served the wrong appetizer, and I decided to just go ahead and eat it. And it was amazing. It was so good that I thought of asking them after the meal was over, whether they had any leftovers and I could have another one. (but I didn’t ask…I was full anyway)

When they were clearing away the plate, I asked them what it was, and if I remember correctly, it was a beef sushi roll with wasabi sauce. It was a special item not on the menu. I wish I remembered the exact name…I’m still wondering whether I didn’t write it down somewhere. I remember telling them it was very good…imagine how good it must have been to have me initiate a compliment like that! :P 

Then came the actual appetizer, the poached lobster. This was good as well, though nowhere near as good as the beef roll!

Served with the same kind of bread as before.

I had asked for the salmon, but they came asking whether I was willing to switch to beef, since they were short of one salmon dish. I agreed, since I already had difficulty choosing between the salmon and the beef at the beginning. And the beef did not disappoint. It was very tender, much better than the beef on the MAS flights. The only thing that was not good in this dish was the piece of bread which was rock hard. I think I polished off everything but that…even the polenta.

There were a lot of Malaysians on the return flight. I suspect a lot were Chinese who didn’t eat beef. :P A little anecdote: My friend and I had been speaking Hokkien all along during the flight. When we were disembarking, there was something dropped into the aisle and I asked the Chinese-looking person next to me whether it was his. He replied to me in (Penang) Hokkien, so I guess he heard us and already knew we were from Penang…

Back to the meal, here’s the chocolate cake for dessert. Such a pretty presentation…

By the way, I mentioned earlier that I didn’t like the port. I disliked it to the point that I was planning to not finish it. But as I ate the beef, I sipped the port a little and somehow found it more palatable, so I did finish it after all.

I had seen dessert wine on the menu, so when they brought me the dessert, I asked for the dessert wine. I didn’t find it very good though.

And that's all folks! Next post about the trip will be about something other than airlines!