Adoption approved!

Some time ago, I wrote about a Mega Venusaur in the office. When I went to take the photo, there were actually a few people around, of which I only knew one. When I asked whose Venusaur it was, a girl said, "for now it's mine". I was surprised to hear that, but did not dare to ask any more because I didn't know her. Instead I said something like, "How come for now? If you don't want it you can give it to me."

Fast forward to this month (earlier this month), this girl came to my cubicle with my friend (the one who was around that day). She brought me the Venusaur! As soon as I saw her holding the Venusaur, I was awfully excited, and was extremely pleased to receive the Venusaur, but a little apprehensive...how come they wanted to give it away? After some slight probing on my part, they said that they were supposed to return it to its actual owner (who had left the company), but the owner did not want it yet. As I had already presented myself as a willing adopter, I guess they decided to give it up for adoption!

I brought the Venusaur home for a photo shoot, like all my other Pokemon.

The flower droops down, so we can't really see the tree trunk. Here I lifted up the petals so that we can see the leaves below it better. There are two wires on both sides of the tree trunk (not clearly seen because they are covered by the leaves) to keep the trunk from falling over, I think.

Then Venusaur took a photo with the welcoming committee of Squirtle and Dragonite! (okay, it's more to show the size in comparison)

"Why did you two evolve so quickly; didn't you want to enjoy your childhood?" says Squirtle.

Now Venusaur is back in the office, guarding over my cubicle with a grumpy face. Haha...

Note: I didn't know much about Mega evolution Pokemon before this, but I read it up after finding out that this was a Mega Venusaur. Only some Pokemon can Mega-evolve, and they can only do so during a battle, and then they will revert to their original state after the battle ends. I guess this is to add more "spice" to the Pokemon Gameboy game. My Mega Venusaur seems to be perpetually in battle; it can't change back to become a normal Venusaur!

Jalan-jalan cari makan in KL

Last weekend I made a trip to KL for a friend's wedding. At the same time, another friend wanted to go to Ikea, so we went there together. We stayed for 4 days 3 nights. We didn't actually go to touristy spots... the highlights of our trip was actually basically food. :P

So I shall start by writing about the food that we had.

Upon arrival, we immediately looked for a place to have lunch. We got off the bus at KL Sentral, so we ended up at Nu Sentral (a mall connected to KL Sentral) and finally chose to eat at Ramen Village (our rule was, no food that we can find at Penang!)

shoyu ramen, RM15.90

kimchi ramen, RM18.90

I ordered shoyu ramen, which is the most basic kind of ramen, while my friend (who loves kimchi) ordered kimchi ramen. The prices on the menu (and above) are non-inclusive of 10% service charge and 6% govt tax.

My friend said that my dish tasted better, but I personnally didn't find it specially good. As for the kimchi ramen, I don't care much for kimchi anyway, so my ramen was still better.

I took a photo of the napkin just to remember what the shop logo looks like.

That night we went to Jalan Alor, and we saw this lollipop chicken stall which looked really appealing.

We ordered two lollipop chicken and two chicken fingers for RM10. The seller asked whether we wanted it spicy, and sprinkled chilli powder on the lollipop chicken when we said yes. Seems that the chicken fingers are supposed to go with chilli sauce instead, so they weren't sprinkled with any seasoning powder.

We found that there were three lollipop chicken instead of two. But two were smaller than the other one. I took the two smaller ones, and only after eating, did I notice that they were actually from the wingette, whereas the bigger one was the drummet.

The chicken fingers were rather disappointing because it was like ham/sausage with cheese filling. Nothing special there...

All in all, this was just plain fried chicken; however the "lollipop" name (and look) made it more attractive!

Along Jalan Alor, there were many seafood restaurants...however with just the two of us we couldn't exactly eat much. So we decided to just try some Cambodian dishes in a Cambodian-Thai restaurant.

The most special dish on the menu seemed to be amok. There were fish amok and chicken amok, and the fish one was the chef's recommendation (it had the "recommended" icon on the menu), so we selected that.

fish amok, RM18

It's really a small bowl... but we expected that because we had asked about its size before ordering. The price on the menu was RM15, so when we were paying, we asked why it was RM18. Then they showed us the new menu which had the new price RM18. -_-

The white liquid on top is coconut milk. Here I'm scooping some of the amok out with a fork: there's fish and also some Chinese cabbage.

Besides that, we ordered spring rolls, which were listed in the Cambodian part of the menu, but is basically the same as Vietnamese spring rolls (I guess they're Cambodian rather than Thai!)

spring rolls, RM15

Spring rolls were nothing special, but we loved the amok. It was just a pity that we weren't especially hungry, and didn't want to order rice, because the spicy amok would have gone well with rice. We felt that the amok was similar to otak-otak.

The next morning we went to Petaling Street for breakfast. We went to the famous Hon Kee porridge stall, and both ordered chee cheong chok (they called it crispy intestines porridge on the menu, if not mistaken).

The porridge came piping hot, as you can see in this photo:

The steam fogged up my camera lenses!

A clearer shot:

chee cheong chok, RM5.50

I think the taste of the porridge was not that good, but I liked that they had tongue. Actually they only had crispy intestine and tongue, nothing else. Pepper and soy sauce were provided on the table for us to add to the porridge ourselves. Maybe that is why the taste of the porridge wasn't good enough... I think they probably made plain porridge and then added the ingredients on when we ordered. This is because there were fish porridge and other kinds of porridge on the menu too.

The specialty of this porridge is that the texture is very smooth. I think that is also why the porridge was extremely hot; it continued steaming even at the end of the bowl.

That day was my friend's wedding, so that took up lunchtime. My friend went to Ikea while I attended the wedding, so I met her at MyTown (a mall connected to Ikea Cheras) after the wedding. For dinner we selected a Korean shop in MyTown called Sopoong. They had a few set meals with one main and one side/snack dish. I ordered a stir-fried udon with kimbab set. Each set comes with side dishes and a drink.

stir-fried udon

kimbab

My plate of udon was rather big. I was surprised because it comes with kimbab which has rice in it, and I was expecting a not-so-big portion of udon.

My friend ordered a set of kimchi ramen with topokki. I didn't take a photo of the kimchi ramen because it's common and didn't look special, but here's the topokki. It comes with half a boiled egg and fish cake slices.

topokki

There were side dishes for each of us; the side-dish tray has three parts, and the part that's not captured in the picture contained kimchi.

In general the dishes were not especially good. My udon was quite good. I felt the kimbab was passable, but the rice did not have much taste to it. The topokki tasted good enough, but was a bit too chewy. As for the kimchi ramen, as usual I can't really give my opinion, but when I tasted the soup, I was reminded yet again of what a Korean-fanatic friend had told me: Order ramen in Korea and you will get instant noodles. There was an unmistakeable instant-noodle taste in the soup. My picky friend said nothing was good except my udon.

For the udon, we could select whether we wanted it normal or spicy. I chose spicy, and I found lots of bird's eye chillies in my dish!

These are the ones I picked out...a few went into my mouth, giving me a burst of fire. Luckily I had anticipated that and had selected iced green tea instead of hot green tea for my drink. (I generally prefer hot green tea)

My set was priced at RM19.90 on the menu, but on the bill the price was slightly lower, than added with 10% service charge. So we guessed that the menu price was before the abolishment of GST. My friend's set was RM1 cheaper if not mistaken.

In KL there are lots of Komugi branches. It is a chain of Japanese bakery. At one of the chains, there was a 20% discount on pastries (the cashier/owner told me that it was his own special discount because they had just opened), and I saw a baumkuchen so I decided to try it. I had heard of baumkuchen in Detective Conan and in Doctors (a Japanese series), so I was curious as to what it tasted like.

Baumkuchen is actually bigger; what I bought is a mini baumkuchen (or as they labelled it, "mini baum")

They had several flavours (chocolate and green tea amongst others), but I took the original one because I had never eaten baumkuchen before. It looks like a round layer cake, and it actually tastes just like normal cake, except that there's more "crust"? Just like what you could expect from a normal cake that is baked layer by layer instead of in one go.

The original price is RM4.50, so it was RM3.60 after the discount. Personally I don't feel it's worth RM4.50... except for this initial tasting.

The next day, which was Sunday, we went to Petaling Street for breakfast again. My friend wanted to try the yong tau foo, but for some reason the store wasn't selling, even though there were some tofu there. So we ended up trying a curry mee stall. We planned to have an early lunch in Kajang (to try the famous satay there), so we shared a bowl of noodles. I didn't take a photo because curry mee is way too common :P

In Kajang, we went for a walk around before going to have satay (because my friend said she was still full). It's just as well that we did, because my friend saw a shop selling spicy pepper soup (辣汤 / "la tang"; I have no idea what it's supposed to be called in English). There were a lot of people waiting, so we decided to go and have the satay, then come back later.

We had our satay at Haji Samuri, which was just opposite the MRT station. There are actually a few satay shops there, but this was the biggest. Because we wanted to eat two different things for lunch, we only ordered four sticks of satay each. My friend went for two sticks each of chicken and fish satay, while I was more adventurous and took one each of chicken, fish, liver and gizzard, and stomach aka tripe.

anti-clockwise from right: chicken, fish, tripe, liver and gizzard

When we ordered at the counter, they gave us a tray of everything but the satay. The satay was brought to us later.

I like that they gave us a lot of cucumber, but I wonder whether it is per person or per satay! The red sambal was pretty good, a bit like nasi lemak sambal. Pity we didn't have rice to eat with it. The satay sauce, on the other hand, was not very thick (as you can see from the photo) and the taste was also not particularly special.

The chicken and fish satay were extremely tender, but the spices didn't seem specially good either. The tripes were slightly chewy (one piece chewier than the rest). The gizzards were a bit chewy too, but that was fine; the liver was very soft which I guess was intended but I didn't specially like it. The liver and gizzard stick came with a piece of gizzard at either end. The two bigger pieces in the middle are liver.

Done with satay, we made our way back to the shop selling spicy pepper soup. The shop doesn't even have a name; the big words there are to state that it sells spicy pepper soup.

We still had to wait quite a while for a table, which was fine by us, because we weren't exactly hungry. (Earlier my friend had asked, and they said they were open until 3pm.) But while waiting, the smell of the pepper soup really struck our nostrils and we kept sneezing. In that sense, it was a difficult wait.

This being our second lunch, we shared a single-person portion of the soup, and a bowl of white rice (because the soup is spicy, it needs to be taken with rice). Our food took ages to arrive (while waiting we had already noticed that the food was not served very quickly), which gave us even more time to digest our satay.

The price came up to RM15.40 for the two of us, which was rather expensive... because besides this we only ordered an iced Chinese tea (which cost 50 sen) each. However the soup was really good! They also had other dishes like some kind of pork (with a somewhat dry dark sauce) in a claypot which everyone seemed to order, vinegar pork trotter, and a simple stir-fried vegetables which almost every table had too.

That night we went back to Petaling Street for Kim Lian Kee's hokkien char.

RM10 per plate, plus 6% service tax

On our last day in KL, we had a simple roti canai breakfast in an Indian eatery near our hotel. The roti canai was not bad, but unfortunately it was not served hot. What I liked about the roti canai was that it was stretched thinner than most that we usually find, without some of those thicker parts.

After checking out of the hotel, we made our way to TBS where we were to take our bus. We had lunch at a restaurant called Rumah Padang, selling Padang food. They had different sets on the menu for us to choose from, such as "one chicken, one veggie", "one beef, one veggie", or "one chicken, two veggies", which was good because it allows us to avoid being surprised by the final price. However they added 6% service tax at the counter, so I still got surprised. :(

RM13.50 plus 6% service tax

I took beef rendang, and it was pretty good! The set also comes with either iced tea or sirap.

That's all for the food that we had in KL. I do have some other photos besides food, so I will post them later on...

Glowing fish and bunnies

I went to the Setia mid-autumn festival celebration. Went to the homeowner's registration counter wearing a Pokemon t-shirt and shorts (I didn't bother to change my home clothes). If the person at the counter didn't think that I looked like a homeowner, her behaviour didn't show it...props to her for that! :P

Before the festival, they had put up a number of fish which look really lovely at night:

The photos don't really do them justice... And I noticed in the daytime that they don't look nice unless if they are lighted up.

On the contrary, they added bunnies for the celebration today, and the bunnies look nice whether they are lighted up or not!

welcoming you on the red carpet (except that there's no carpet :P )

bunnies and the moon!

I didn't get photos of the bunnies lighted up, because I didn't stay till dark. But I saw them last night!

Kidnapper alert!

Last week's photo theme was white.

Even though this photo was snapped quickly, through the windshield of the car, and is rather blurred (there was no chance for a second photo), I think the the photo subject makes it worthy of being the photo of the week.

White kidnapper's van spotted!

Mee bandung teloq pecah dalam

A friend recommended me this mee bandung that he said was really good. I just went to try it out yesterday (take-away), and it didn't disappoint.

There were two big prawns, and it cost RM6.

When I poured the noodles into the bowl, I moved the prawns up to the top, together with what I thought was a fishball. However, when I bit into the "fishball", I found it to be especially chewy. I was thinking, why would they put mochi/tang yuan into mee bandung? Then after taking a bite, I saw the yellow colour and realized that it was the egg yolk!

By the way, I searched mee bandung online to see what makes it mee bandung. There are two explanations, but I'll take the first one: it says that "bandung" is to mix two things together, so mee bandung comes from mixing noodles and egg, together with spices and chilli to make up the gravy. Similarly, this is where the name air bandung comes from, because it is sirap (red syrup) mixed with milk.

The previous mee bandung I had was in Port Dickson (more accurately Lukut). I remember that being very good too, but I can't really remember the taste.

The title of this post corresponds to the stall's name on Google Maps. However I am not sure whether it is the actual name of the stall, because when I went there, I didn't see any stall name at all! There was no menu either. After I ordered my mee bandung and sat down the wait, the pakcik there chatted a bit with me (it was rather early, before 6:30pm, and I was the only customer waiting for food, while others were eating or had just left). He was very proud of his stall, and when I told him that a friend had recommended this place, he said, "Yes, usually people will come, then next time bring their friends, then next time bring their family." (something like that lah, he mentioned suami (husband) instead of family) He said that they serve hokkien mee and char hor fun as well, although mee bandung was their main dish.

Similarly, my friend had told me that they sold other dishes, but that their mee bandung was the star! He said that the stall opens at around 4pm till 10pm, but if we go too late, the mee bandung may be sold out.

Love from fluffy teddies

This week's theme is love.

So the timing was just right that my friend gave me a super-early birthday present in this teddy paper bag!

Mushroom garden

Last Thursday I went to JPN Seberang Perai Utara for a friend's ROM. Inside, they had this cute mushroom garden!

Acqua pazza, round two

On the heels of my spiced acqua pazza, I tried making a version without chilli flakes.

It tastes great too! Great recipe, so easy and I only need fish and tomatoes (the other ingredients are always available at home).

By the way, I found out the difference between cherry tomatoes and grape tomatoes. Cherry tomatoes are round (shaped like cherries), while grape tomatoes are oblong (shaped like grapes). Cherry tomatoes are sweeter and juicier, while grape tomatoes have thicker skins.

The tomatoes which I bought at the supermarket were labelled cherry tomatoes, but they are oblong, and I have no doubt that they are actually grape tomatoes! The article also mentions that grape tomatoes last longer than cherry tomatoes, and are less fragile, hence easier to transport. I guess that is why the mini tomatoes that we find are usually grape tomatoes and not cherry tomatoes.

Fine architecture

This guy is getting lazy!

Two weeks ago, the Photo Friday theme was summer, the same as two years ago.

Now this week's theme is architecture, a repeat of one year ago!

This time I present you an example of fine(?) architecture in the making...

I'd post more about the whole thing when it's done, but that might take some time...

Asam pedas

I've been working with a different team at work this quarter, and we had a team lunch today. We initially planned to go to Pak Hussin Tomyam, but it was suddenly closed today due to lack of workers. (When we reached, they said they were opening at 4pm and not 12pm which was the usual time.)

We ended up going to Asam Pedas Premier which is situated at One Precinct, next to the Sunshine Market food court.

We decided to each order our own set, and just add on a few side dishes to share. I ordered daging panggang masak lemak cili api.

The beef is actually in slices:

The gravy was really good, creamy with a slight tinge of spiciness from the cili api. The beef was not really tender enough though. But since it was in thin slices, it was still okay.

Most of the others ordered rice with chicken: ayam goreng rempah, ayam rendang, ayam sambal. They said the ayam sambal was really spicy but good. Then one ordered ikan pari bakar, and another ordered daging bakar (which I considered but did not order because there was no photo to tempt me :P ) It turned out that the "bakar" items were like a Portuguese grill, wrapped in aluminium foil. But I didn't take photos of the main dishes other than mine...so I can't show them to you!

As for side dishes, we ordered cucur udang, which were nice and crispy at the edges, but lacked prawns.

Then there was sotong goreng tepung, which I really liked.

The batter is spiced, so there is no chilli dip for this (there was a dip for the cucur udang above).

As one of the others mentioned, we came to Asam Pedas Premier, but none of us ordered asam pedas. So we ordered a bowl of asam pedas pari to share.

Verdict? I liked both the asam pedas and my masak lemak cili api. As I mentioned above, I liked the sotong goreng tepung but not the cucur udang. My set cost RM13.50, and the others were around RM12-13 if I remember correctly. For lunch (Monday to Thursday), they had lunch sets which come with a free drink (basically the price is the same as on the usual menu but they give us kopi o, teh o, or sirap for free). I can't remember the prices of the side dishes and all though...and we haven't seen the bill yet!

Then at the end we took a group photo.

You can see the advertised cucur udang behind us...the prawn there is sure a lot bigger than what we were served!