Whisk

We have been hearing and passing this dessert place in Empire Gallery for a while now. While walking past you can smell the beautiful aroma of coffee emanating from this place. It is a small little half a shop place at the lowest ground at Empire Gallery close to Jaya Grocer. Apparently they are very famous for their cakes and they also hand make macaroon.

We were hungry for some dessert so we decided to give it a go. As we were walking in, I saw a sign that says Toffee Nut Latte and I was instantly sold on the coffee.

Unfortunately the Toffee Nut coffee disappointed me very much. First thing first is the coffee wasn't hot but just lukewarm. That in itself is already very bad for a good cuppa coffee. It means they frothed the milk a while ago and when they made my cuppa coffee the milk already cooled down. I almost sent back the cuppa coffee just because it was not hot enough. Second thing that disappointed me is that the Toffee Nut was not actually infused into the beans but was via a syrup. This made the coffee a little too sweat for my liking. Overall I would have to say I was very disappointed with the coffee.

Amy wanted to order a cuppa coffee as well, however since it was already in the evening and she goes bonkers when she has coffee at night. I didn't allow her to have any coffee. So she went for a cuppa hot chocolate.

It was so so only as well if I can remember it correctly. Nothing super spectacular about it. I think it wasn't warm enough as well.

We also ordered a Grandma's Recipe Cake...

Now this didn't disappoint at all. It was good piece of cake and when I took a bite, I thought it was actually carrot cake. However Amy said it wasn't and on my second bite actually it was more like butter cake but the icing was the carrot cake cheese icing. Really good piece of cake I would have to say. Nice and moist but maybe a little too sweet. However I have been reducing alot of my sugar intake so maybe my taste buds is a little biased.

I like the decor of the place, they have made it to look like a small dessert place in the UK or Europe.

Check out the old school tiles man. Reminds me of my mum's old kitchen. Overall I would have to the say the drinks were disappointing by the cake was pretty good. Next time must go try the macaroon. The price was actually on the high side as our 2 cuppa drinks and cake cost us around RM30. My cuppa coffee was like 13 bucks or something.

I have been a BAD BAD Boy

On Friday last week I got a very very serious email in my office email inbox. Looks like I have been a bad bad boy and have accessed some illegal sites. Looks like me visiting the illegal sites on my laptop is catching up on me. What is worst it is not my company has caught me but a federal government body that caught me.

Looks like I have to stop visiting all those porn sites that I go to before the FBI bust down my door and haul me into jail. Haha.

Beautiful Flyday

For the past say 3 or 4 weeks, it has been raining like mad at least at one point of the day. It not only rains but rains hard with thunder and lighting as well. It is well sort of my fault because about 3 weeks ago, went for a 3-4 hours karaoke session and then last week Maroon 5 was down in KL. I have been known to flood certain towns when I start singing.

However yesterday and today, it hasn't rained and while walking to work today from the car park I realised what a wonderful Flyday today is. Fantastic skies. Check it out.

Days like this I wished I was outside with my camera instead of having to go to office and be stuck in the office for 8 hours.

Feeling Hungry?

Nowadays with the wealth of restaurants around and each restaurant offering 100 of choices of food to eat, sometimes it gets really hard to choose a place to eat. Most of the time Amy and I would be down with the same question, where you want to eat. One day we were at Sg Wang and we went to Farmosa restaurant which is a Taiwanese sort of restaurant. 

We sat down and the menu was brought to us and I was flipping through the menu and something caught my eye.

 

See anything weird other then well say the Simmered Ox Tendon? Still can't see it? Look all the way down to item number 22. Do you want some Large Bowel Mee Sua? Sounds good to me. Haha. Nah didn't order it. Was to chicken to order it. Hehe

Macro around the garden

Adding to my super bored car interior post, I follow up with an equally bored macro post. Macro is not one of my strongest photography technique. Then again I am not really strong in any of the photography technique. Most people specialised in certain fields of photography say landscape, macro, wedding or portraiture. Me semua rojak and not good at anyone particular field.

So here is some macro's I took around my house garden.

This is of course Bougainvillea flower which more commonly known in Malaysia as the bunga kertas. Now the funny thing about this shot is that the first shot I shot using an SLR was also a Bougainvillea flower and it was from this exact same tree. This is the shot I was talking about.

Now the scary thing is that was taken using a canon 400d with the 17-55 kit lens and it was maybe taken in Apperture priority mode. 4 years on and the photos still look the same and I have upgraded to a freaking 5D and using a Tamron SP90 which is a dedicated macro lens and in Manual mode. Still no improvement. Pengsan betul. 

Anyway moving alone, another very well shot flower in my garden is...

Up till today, I have still yet to take a clear picture of this flower on macro. I think it is really time for me to consider to make the decision to invest in a good quality tripod.

This is a picture of the same pink/red flower above but it has yet to bloom.

At least this picture is a little more respectable where there are at least clear part of the picture which is actually sharp. This I think it is also the same species of flower as the above one but it is white in color. The other difference about this flower is that the middle filament part is much bigger as well.

Recently I have been trying to do more black and white photos, still not able to take good black and white photos but here goes nothing...

Ok ok to tell you the truth this shot was actually a failed shot. It was suppose to be macro shot but as you can see everything is blur. So had to convert it to black and white to save the shot. I guess it was worth a try.

Now I go to this flower which I always consider a real challenge to take. The reason why I call it a challenge is because well the flower is the size of maybe a 20 cent coin.

Why I like to macro this flower is obvious, the filaments in the middle are super small which makes it really nice if you get it right. Unfortunately once again, failed attempt. Last but not least is actually a new flower which I haven't photographed before.

The thing that caught my eyes to take this picture is that when I got really close up, they actually look a little like roses. It looks almost like a bunch of roses.

Well that is all about the macro for this time around. Need to really brush up my skills and work on my macro photography. Maybe the first thing is to invest in a tripod. Unfortunately at this point of time, no money because house reno and wedding is in the pipeline and boy I am going to be broke. :)

Just being bored

I have been getting bored with my photography and it hasn't gotten any better. For some reason I feel that I am taking the same exact pictures and I have not taken a picture I have gone "Wow now that is a really good picture" in a very long while already. Couple weeks back while washing my car, I decided to be all macho and all and dismantle my car door to check my automatic window which has been leaving some oil stains on my glass.

Unfortunately after about an hour or so trying to get to the panel, I finally found out that the whole rig was actually behind a whole piece of metal which I am not able to access easily. I gave up but not after deciding to pop to hood and check under the hood. Then I decided to take my camera out to capture some shots.

That is the guts of my car and what makes it so fuel economical. Well that is what Toyota wants you to believe but in the end I think because the car is built as light as a tin can that is why it saves so much petrol. 

This is what generates electricity for the entire car and enables things like the radio and lights to work. It also charges this...

To allow for your car to startup every morning. 

I have no idea what this part is above but the only reason why I took it was because it got a Toyota sign on it. Wah lau advertising for Toyota kau kau. Now we go to what makes the car move when you press the on accelerator pedal.

The part above if I am not mistaken and I could be because like I know alot about car engines is the throttle wire. Basically when you press the accelerator paddle it pulls this wire and the engine revs.

Again no idea what the part above is but it just made a great picture that is all.

Yup my car's color is Phantom Grey 7457. So good of them to put it on the inside bay of my car and will allow me to pick out the right color if it needs re-spraying.

The part above is what activates the SRS airbag. If I am not mistaken that is either the accelerometer or the crash sensor. Basically it should measure the amount of deceleration of the car and if it reaches a certain limit it deems that you have hit something hard enough to deploy the airbag it would. If it is a crash sensor then basically if you hit something and the car crumples until it whacks this bugger, it will trigger off the airbag to save you life if you are wearing your safely belt of course.

Remember people, do not open this cap when it is hot. If you still plan to open it, well be prepared to cook your hands and maybe your head depending on where your head is when the cap is open. Basically that is the radiator cap and when the car heats up, the water and coolant combo inside the radiator boils up and become steam. So if you open it when it is hot, the steam will rush out under pressure.

This is the fuses that is under the fuse box, this will prevent any sudden surge of electrical power from blowing out all the lights and electronics in your car. Surprisingly the electrical power in your car is very "dirty" It is not a stable 12V but goes up and down depending on the revs of your car as well as the charge of the batteries. It is especially "dirty" when the car is first started up. It is advisable not to plug in any of those car phone charges when starting the engine. Oh yea it might blow up when you do since the surge of power is uncontrollable.

The system of pulleys above are the parts that turn as the engine turn to power things like the alternator to generate electricity and also run things like the A/C in your car. After a while I got really adventurous and decided to take out the top engine cover off to see what is inside. After the top cover came off...

What impresses me is the colored dots on each of the what looks to me like spark plug covers. What I think those dots represent are actually checks by Toyota personnel. So what I imagine during the production line, each stage of the production line has a different color. So once they put the spark plug in and cap it off, the fella will mark it with his/her own color. Once it goes to QC and the fella has checked it then he/she marks it off with another color and maybe at final QC the fella must check that all the colors are there and he/she check the part one last time and then he/she marks his own color as well. So if there are any problems they will know which exact section that didn't do their job correctly. All this is speculation of course and that is why Toyota is world renowned for its car manufacturing.

Last but not least is of course the dip stick to check the condition of your engine oil. It is important to check the condition of the engine oil as it is the engine oil that keeps all the parts in the engine well lubricated and cool as well. So if there are particulates in the engine, things starts to grind with each other and you might end up getting a brick of an engine.

Well that is what I do on a Saturday morning when I am bored and Amy is at work. Lame I know. Oh well.

Siew Yoke

Disclaimer: This post is full of pictures that could be offensive to people from other religions. If you feel offended by pictures of this nature please feel free to skip this and come back next week for a post of a different nature. For those of you who are not offended, please be prepared and maybe prepare a bip to mop up all the drool.

It is about 2 months from our ROM and about 7 months to our wedding. I also just took my yearly blood test and it came back high cholesterol and high uric acid. So in the past week or so, when Amy and I would look for food we will try to take the healthier alternative. So last weekend while driving along the LDP, we were thinking of a place to eat and Amy said well there is the Fu Kua (Bitter gourd) restaurant which is of course healthy. 

I have been trying my best to avoid this place because Fu Kua basically my nemesis when it comes to food. I will only eat Fu Kua if it has been forced down on me, unless it is the fried Fu Kua my colleague makes which doesn't taste like Fu Kua anymore. So we drove towards Taman Sea and just before reaching the Fu Kua restaurant, we saw the sign SIEW YOKE. As any self respective chinese person, we couldn't resist the lure of slow roasted belly pork which is so soft and juicy in the middle and yet has a crispy skin. 

We made the conclusion that heck tonight we are playing tennis anyway and we will surely burn off what we eat now. So lo and behold we were in the Siew Yoke restaurant. Oh yea we were also drawn in because while looking at the menu at the front, the waiter told us there was a promo where buy a small plate of siew yoke and get 2 bowls of noodles free.

Initially I was being greedy and was asking Amy if a small plate is enough for the both of us. However logics prevailed and we ordered the small plate of Siew Yoke and first to come was....

The chili sauce was actually pretty good surprisingly. It has the right balance of spiciness and also a hint of sourness from the vinegar. Amy was saying that they were using good quality vinegar. After some patient waiting and the next thing that came out was...

Yea we ordered a plate of tofu to "offset" the unhealthiness of the things to come. This plate of tofu also saved us from ordering the medium sized plate of siew yoke. The tofu was nice, soft and most importantly COLD. The main thing about this dish is the tofu needs to be cold and the fried garlic/onions have to be sufficient. Usually you will not have enough oyster sauce on top but this one had too much. Finally after somemore waiting the main dish arrived.

They had 3 types of Siew Yoke there and we order the melting gold roast. The best thing about this slab of siew yoke was that it wasn't very fatty. It had just the right amount of fat to keep the meat moist while it is being roasted and the skin was oh so very crispy. The meat wasn't really melting in our mouths but still it was very good tasting. Combined with the chili it was a really really really good meal.

The only thing missing from this meal is some beer. I mean beer with siew yoke is one of THE BEST combination to have while say at a pub or something. More pubs should serve siew yoke and maybe have a beer and siew yoke combo you know. We each also ordered the 8 treasures herbal tea and guess what? It had free refills. Now that is what I call a steal. Everything came in at 23 bucks and it was a very satisfying meal that probably contributed to why my tennis sucked so badly that evening. The fat from the siew yoke was weighing me down and making me lazy to run and swing the racket. :)