The 4th Night

Tonight, has been the single most eventful night in the history of my driving experience, which actually isn’t that long but anyway… It started when a few friends came to my house for Chinese New Year visiting. They left to go do some more visiting, we met up again later and somebody suggested going to watch a movie so we left. Just a few minutes into driving, we reached a traffic light which turned green just before we reached it. Normally I take turns a little bit faster than would be comfortable. However, I felt like I had to slow down at that moment, and good thing I did. Because when I was turning right, a silver Mercedes from the opposite direction suddenly went straight though he wasn’t supposed to! My friend who was driving the car behind me honked him but I was just too O.O to do much but stop a while and go when I made sure he had seen my car.

So that started the series of unfortunate events. After that, we finally reached the car park and after going up I-don’t-know how-many floors and found a space, we arrived at the cinema only to find a long queue and the shows sold out. So we left, and me half-annoyed that I had gone through the trouble of finding parking and being disappointed only to have to pay RM1 parking for nothing. Noob moment No.1 was at the car park paying station I wind down the wrong window to pay the parking fee. Haha. Noob is me.

But the incidents didn’t stop there. After paying a short visit to a friend’s house, we went to McD at the airport nearby because some people didn’t have dinner. My friend drove in before me, he being the faster driver got there before me, and he got the last parking ticket the machine had. I however did not know that, and the machine has no function that shows that it has run out of tickets. So I got there, wind down the correct window, pressed the green button like the instructions sad to. No ticket. Press again. No ticket. Press press press. Okay… Second try, reverse go back, just in case the sensor was spoilt or something, press, again nothing. Sigh. My friend had to go down and get the parking attendant to get a ticket and open the “bar” to let us in.

No I’ve no idea why these things happened. But this afternoon my friend asked me if I wanted to meet up for chinese new year visiting and I turned them down because I was feeling anti-social and the rainy day just seemed like the perfect weather to stay in and be emo, stare at raindrops falling, play emo piano songs or something like that. Then out of nowhere, another friend called saying they were coming over. And one thing led to another and I ended up following their plans. Maybe it was a sign, the anti-social feeling earlier on meant that I should have just stayed home, be safe. Heh. I guess I should be really thankful that me and the car are still ok after all that, thank God for that.

Okay, one picture for this post… Enough drama.

My sole two purchases from KL before Chinese New Year. As is tradition, Chinese New Year is the time of the year when Chinese wear new clothes as a tradition. I managed to only buy a dress and a top at Bangsar, not too bad considering my usual shopping style. I travelled super light in terms of clothes when I came back this time, the bulk of my luggage being my laptop and a heavy Biology book my sister asked me to buy. Unbelievably, I just brought back a pair of jeans, two skirts, a couple of tees, and my two new clothes. And it’s been constantly raining here, not exactly good for laundry. And most of my clothes are back in uni because of my crazy packing so that translated into too few decent looking outfits for the many days of Chinese New Year. Today, people who are observant enough to notice would thus notice that I’m recycling looks.

3 more days till I go back to uni….. New semester. New modules. The nerd in me should be silently rejoicing or something. In the mean time, I’m just living my “eat and be merry” life.

Pasta Zanmai Midvalley

We shall break with a food post, because I’ve been eating too much good food recently after exams and I guess the food posts need spacing out. So here’s something from quite some time ago last year, when we went to Pasta Zanmai at Midvalley, when it was still then newly opened.

Midvalley’s Pasta Zanmai is on the same floor and part of the building as Toys R Us, where I think there was previously an Italalian restaurant that didn’t do too well. We went at lunch time and it was just right, not too crowded that staff is overwhelmed, not too empty that the waiters hover nearby as you eat.

We sat down at a roundish booth that gave some sort of privacy on three sides, and here was the table set up:

Eating pasta with chopsticks? Yes, that’s what you do at Pasta Zanmai. Not exactly Italian, not exactly Japanese. The plates are there if you want to share food I guess. And they served water after we sat down.

The menu is quite interesting, with choices of appetizers, salads, pastas, main dishes, desserts in its own style.

My friend wasn’t feeling too hungry and loves salmon sashimi so she ordered this salad with greens and strips of salmon sashimi on top. The sauce that comes with it is unusual, you have the option of a miso based sauce and a sesame one. My friend couldn’t make up her mind and had both. The sesame sauce is quite salty and kind of overpowering, however the miso sauce seemed a bit off with salad. The salad itself had no complaints though.

Then, another friend’s dish arrived, a Chicken Pasta dish that had a half cooked egg on top that you are supposed to mix in, like some kind of Carbonara pasta. Don’t be deceived by the photos, the pasta servings are quite generous, I had a hard time finishing mine.

Another friend ordered a Hamburger Bolognaise-like pasta dish set. Set meaning that it comes with a side salad and miso soup, seems very filling. The pasta looks like a very meaty dish, with the only green being a piece of basil on top.

Finally, mine came last after much waiting. My sort of like Alfredo style pasta with Chicken and mushrooms. The Chicken looks the same as my friend’s dish, the mushrooms are the enoki and Chinese mushroom kind. The sauce however was.. Wow. Then again, I may be biased because I like cream-based sauces. This was really creamy and cheesy, so rich yet so nice. Until I was about half way through it and it got a bit cloying. Then again, probably just because the serving is big, no complaints.

Well, Pasta Zanmai is quite an interesting place to go if you want to try something new yet not too new. Pricewise, it’s like any ordinary restaurant, around RM20 for salads, RM20+ to RM30+ for pastas. I can’t say much for the other kinds of food I have not tried, but the ones we ordered that day are pretty good. Not some place that I personally would frequent, I like my food pure personally. But worth a try I’d say.

The December I turned 21

I have such a backlog of things to post about I’m just going to write about the earlier part of December before I went back for the Christmas holidays. And I must blog about this because my friends at uni did such a good birthday surprise, thanks so much =)! It all started on the night before the 5th, we were in our own rooms, with doors ajar, as usual. Just online, exam stress still far far away from thought, and me wondering what was going to go on that night. I noticed Grace’s door was ajar and her light on but she wasn’t it at around 10, but just thought she may be with Stephanie preparing “something” and didn’t think much of it, still had no idea what kind of surprise they were planning. Then, about 15 minutes before midnight, Cynthia came to my room and handed me a orange paper with a riddle to solve. Apparently, they weren’t going to make this easy for me this year, I was going to have to set out to find them.

The first clue led me to a water machine near some halls of residence on the way to the lecture buildings, and on the machine there was stuck, “Do not touch if you’re not WQ”. Awesome. If these were on electronical devices I would have felt like I was in Eagle Eyes. And the third clue led me to the red-coloured building where labs were, on the opposite end of uni from my room. All this while, Cynthia was following me on my quest, during which I certainly did a fair amount of walking. Hehe. On the way, we passed by the Student Association building where I saw a bright green car, then stopped to see and there were the cars of the people going to be at my surprise, all parked in a row. Wonderful. Haha. I was thinking that, okay, 3 clues, and the place seemed like quite nice for a surprise, facing the fountain and amphitheatre, this should be the last stop. But no, there were MORE clues. This time leading me to the computer lab. And get this, on the first computer in the main computer room, there was a message for me against a bright yellow background on powerpoint with, yes, another clue.

At this point, it was already midnight, and I still had not found my friends. But interestingly, there seemed to be another birthday going on and we passed by a group of people on the bridge over the lake singing happy birthday, but not for me… Last clue from the computer lab led me to an ambigious point. The clue obviously hinted towards going to the Student Association building, and behind it, it seemed. And at that time, the back of the building was just newly renovated and not fully open for use yet. So I walked to the back, it was very dark, very quiet, if Cynthia were not there I’d be having second thoughts about this.

Then, quite a sight greeted me. Two rows of people, about 19 in all, all standing very still very quietly, in total darkness, and there was some glowing object in the middle. Not a single movement for a few seconds as I took it all in and at the same time it really looked quite scary! As I inched closer to see if this surprise was for me, they broke the silence and sang Happy Birthday. Whew. And wow! I think I was grinning like a silly, dumbfounded girl in amazement that this was all really taking place. Was really surprised to see that many people there, considering that it was a Friday night and most people go home on weekends. Due to the Christmas event preparations, quite a few Christian Fellowship people were still around and came. And my friends even made me an Oreo cheese cake, so nice. And a friend even played the guitar, we lucky people who have birthdays at uni get guitarists at birthdays. Hehe. And then out of nowhere, I even got a call from Jasmine, on Stephanie’s phone, who tried to surprise me with a surprise birthday wisher. After all that had happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if they had managed to get her to come all the way from KL and she was hiding somewhere as part of the surprise. ehe.

And as if all of that wasn’t enough, I had presents. A really nice Fossil leather purse from all of them. Couldn’t thank anyone enough.. Was just so overwhelmed that night.

The 4 clues on paper, one was on the computer screen. 5 clues to find my surprise! And my beautiful new purse, from Fossil. In the lovely, patterned box. And with a nice calendar that came in a metal box.

Close-up of the purse with so many compartments I don’t know quite what to put in them.

Actually, earlier on that night, we had our pharmacy christmas dinner at a residential clubhouse near the uni. A surprisingly good event where the food was good, the crowd was good, the fun was good. And we even got to see our lecturers all dressed up as Santa for a “competition” which involved a catwalk as well.

I see a “Mummy” Santa, Zombie Santa?, Santa with boobs, and Huge Belly Santas. Eventually, it was the Santa pregnant with triplets that won the crowd’s favourite. The dinner was all out to please, with door gifts of these cute teddy keychains with our birthdays on it given to everybody, even to those who didn’t come. Then there were so many chances to win goodies such as lucky draws, being Best Dressed, Talent of the Class, Nerd of the Year, Future Dean… And did I mention that the food was surprisingly good, it was from a western place in Kajang. The only small flaw being that they gave plastic cutlery and expected us to eat slabs of lamb with it. And at the end of the night, they rounded up the December babies and out came a tall cake for us to blow out candles of. I don’t know why I was so edgy then, thinking that my friends would cream my face, throw me into the pool or something.

And so that began a long weekend as Monday was a public holiday in Selangor. But not in KL, and so we took the chance to try to avoid the crowds and went to KLCC. As always, it was nice to get away from uni after being there so long, and not eating cafeteria food, no matter how nice it is now compared to last time.

A&W, it’s been so many years since I’ve been to one, their branches have really decreased in number. Used to be two in Kuching at some point but now none. What I really like are their floats, and their burgers are quite good as well. It had bacon in it, which was a nice crispy touch.

Midweek, on Wednesday, we made reservations to go to Jogoya at Starhill while the Ladies eat at Half Price offer was still valid and the place wasn’t fully booked. Yes, that Japanese buffet place that every other person who’s been there raves about, but which we were to find to be quite unfortunately disappointing.

Being a Japanese place buffet, I would have expected more variety in terms of the Japanese food. But no, they had a lot of other types of food as well, Western, Chinese, local. Which some dishes were quite nice, some really not so. Interestingly enough, the so called VIP dishes of which you had to have a VIP card to try were less nice than the normal fare. Considering the fact that people had to eat about RM1000 worth at Jogoya to qualify for this special card, I’m not too sure they are getting what they pay for. Dinner’s buffet price, which is normally about RM100 if there were no special offer, didn’t seem to really make sense considering the food on offer. I do hope that it was just a bad day that we went and they are not normally like this, can’t see anyone paying this much for food like that, I’d rather go to some normal Japanese place and order what I like, or have a nice meal at Italiannies or Tony Roma’s for much less than that price.

Quite a pity, since this place was supposedly really good when it first started out, with so many bloggers raving about it. Their tempura counter, where I had heard that the prawn tempura is so good that people stand there to wait while they prepare each fresh batch as it clears out so fast, wasn’t that great. Sure the prawn itself was good, but the batter was a bit thick. Saisaki had a better selection in terms of tempura, and the teppanyaki was way better.

Despite the variety of cakes and mochis they had, they tasted nowhere as nice as they looked. Their saving grace in terms of dessert was Haagen Daz, and even that one couldn’t eat too much or you would get queasy.

After the dinner, I felt so queasy I could hardly walk straight without clutching around my tummy. It really wasn’t easy parting with my money for that as a student, and I was sadly disappointed. Never again, I swore to myself. Should have already seen big red alarms ringing in my head when there is an offer this good.

Okay, we shall end with the unpleasantness for this post, which started out on a very pleasant note. Insert photo of pretty Christmas decorations:

I think me, Grace and Cynthia were taking turns having a go on my camera, and I don’t think I took this particular photo but it’s the nicest of the lot. The Louis Voutton shopfront is already so glimmery and with the lit up Christmas trees in front, and cosmopolitan people dressed in black in the foreground, this photo is just pleasant to the eyes, or my eyes at least.

It’s been so long that I don’t think I want to blog any further about Christmas. Not that much happened, just time with the family, at Kuching and Miri. And then it was exams, crazy exams. So next post should probably be about post exams, something happy =).

Hello? Anybody there? Happy New Year?

Hello everybody! It’s a new year! And my first blog of the new year is almost two weeks after New Year’s Day. Exams la, actually only 3 papers done, 2 more to go.

This is my brother posing in front of a Happy New Year card, taken on his birthday on the 30th December. I don’t know where he learns how to pose for photos. This is one of the more normal looking photos, sometimes he likes to do the big eyed, chin tilt downwards, stare into camera pose, alternating with the stiff lipped, stiff jaw, dead serious look. Sigh so funny.

Pretty flowers that seem like creeplers that grow on the ground. I like this photo, the yellow is bright, but the green is subdued. There’s tiny grains of sand on the leaves, giving it a touch of realness and grittiness. And you can see just but a tiny bit of sky in the blurred background.

Oh yea, this was where I spent my Christmas holidays last year. Wow, last year, 2008 is last year. Speaking of which, I didn’t realise how long it was since I last took photos until I was uploading photos from my camera for this post and realised the most recent photo was from my brother’s birthday. Which means, I’ve not taken any photos yet this year. Gasp! Exams exams…..

And this was where the flowers from the previous photo were growing. On this patch of sandy ground, just before the netted up barricade, and the beach beyond that. Nice photos of the beach outing in the next post. Also a lot of things to be blogging about, so many things happened in December…

Just a post to say, I’m alive and well! Still surviving exams, for now. Until next time, bye!