Secondary School CNY Meetup 2011

One of the great things about Chinese New Year is that it is a time for everyone to meet up. It is not only family but also friends. Sometimes people do not meet for the entire year but during Chinese New Year, people make the effort to meet up with each other. This year is no different because most of my secondary school friends are back in Subang for the Chinese New Year so we decided to meet up.

We first met up for lunch at Rakuzen Empire. The only reason why we were at Empire was because Jacinta told me that she couldn't park in Subang Parade but she is able to park in Empire. When I heard that I told her she finally turned into a full Singaporean. It was lucky we got a private room at Rakuzen because we had 9 people coming and we were able to close the door. We made so much noise I think people in Subang Parade can hear us. :)

After lunch we adjourned to Coffee Bean for coffee because my Citibank Clear card has buy 1 free 1 coffee.

All of us ordered coffee and I accidentally miscalculated, I thought we only had 6 drinks but in actual fact we ordered 7 drinks. When the cashier tallied up the drinks I said we only have 6 and he only charged me for 6. I only noticed it after we got all the drinks and Kel was asking me where was his drink. When I told the cashier that he under charged me for 1 drink he said nevermind Chinese New Year bonus. So kind of the fella.

Ee Von went to get some cakes but cannot remember where from.

She got a chocolate cake and also a red velvet. That is currently her favourite cake as she will go everywhere and if they have it, she will order it. See how happy she is to eat the cake.

Check out the cute look and Dr Ooi said he could do better...

But a little fail lar. So instead of fighting they just took a picture together.

I tried to take a picture of Juin Wei but he said do not need to take picture of his ugly mug. Then Kel said well lets take a picture together so there are 2 ugly mugs.

After that they recruited another member into the ugly family.

From ugly guys we go to pretty ladies, first of them all is Jacinta. Haven't seen her for a freaking long time already. Everytime she comes back to KL, I am busy with something. It was great catching up with her again.

Next we have the newly engaged Mei Foong. We all eagerly waited for her to tell the story about how Simon proposed to her in Japan.

After we listened to her story and also Juin Wei's story, Dr Ooi got a little worried that the bar was getting set higher and higher.

Another long time friend I have not met for a while is also Sherry.

Finally of course the lovely Amy and the useless photographer.

It was great to catch up with everyone. We just sat around and chit chat and talked the day over. We met up at 1pm and only left Empire gallery around 5 or 6pm. We need to do this more often gang.

Final Set of Film Prints

This is the last set of film prints I got for now. The other roll which I shot, was way worst then this roll. So I am not giving it any high hopes there is any good pictures in there.

Amy and Saw Wen wanted to head to Hartamas to check out some wedding dresses and being a good person, I drove them there. Of course I won't stay in the wedding boutique, so I brought my camera along and walked around the area.

First thing I notices is what a dump Hartamas is now, the buildings are not maintained at all. The place we went, the button for the elevator wasn't there anymore. There was rubbish everywhere and basically not really what it used to be. However this is the older part of Hartamas.

What did catch my eye was there were quite a few graffiti on the walls.

I am surprised that even when the films were so super underexposed, the colors were still very vivid. This is the power of film. I think if it was shot in digital, there is no way I would be able to recover these shots.

The shot above is a shot looking towards the newer part of town. Up ahead is Mont Kiara where I guess is more happening now.

Last shot of the roll...

These were the lights and fan fixtures at Burger King. Fingers crossed for the other roll of film.

Being a Lil High Crass

Couple months back while Juin Wei was in town, we decided to be High Crass and go for some High Crass food. We all first gathered at Kissaten Jaya One to gorge on some delicious Terikayi Pork Burger. I can safely say it is still one of the best pork burgers I have ever eaten.

Big juicy pork with a telur mata kerbau and some sweet sweet teriyaki sauce. Even Juin Wei agrees...

Once we were done with lunch, it is quite customary for us to go for dessert when Ee Von is around. Since it this is her vice, we asked her were she wants to go. We finally ended up at...

Ignore my finger print on the film

Gourmet is this really shick cafe + bakery + spice market + winery. They sell all kinds of cool stuff from loose expensive tea and coffee (they even have blue mountain and kopi luak) to cheese and also a nice section for wine.

Wine Rack

Biscuit and payment counter

Loose Tea selection

Most importantly of course is they also sell gorgeous looking cakes.

Banofee Pie

Cannot remember name but I think it is Chocolate Cake

Strawberry Cheese Cake

The cakes were simply superb tasting and look pretty good as well. The gang was getting pissed off waiting for me to finish taking the pictures.

We topped everything off with some pretty good but pretty expensive coffee. Unfortunately I couldn't afford the Kopi Luak as it was going for something like 200-300 bucks per 100g. I highly recommend this place to some good cake and coffee. Just be prepared to spend a pretty penny on it. I think 4 of our coffee already cost like 50 bucks or something like that.

The place had some mirrors around and I decided to take a picture of the lovely Miss Ee Von.

When there is nothing better to do, I also take picture of crap. :)

Fat Spoon

Once in a while it is quite fun to take pictures and not know what you going to get until many months later. With the advances of digital cameras it is pretty easy to preview what you shoot 2 seconds after you shoot a picture and correct any mistakes you make. However with film once you shoot it it is imprinted forever in the film and you will never know what is the result until it is developed.

Close to a year ago, my colleague gave me a roll of Fuji Superia ISO100 film which has expired since 2002. It was kept in my room for close to a year and finally I decided to take it out for some shooting. One day we went out with Wen Way's and Shalin to a nice little cafe called fat spoon. It is located at the back part of PJ Uptown at the shops facing the houses. They serve pretty decent food and they have pretty cool looking decor. 

The exterior decor of the place has a almost kampung feel to it. The walls are bare concentrate without plastering or paint and also the tables and chairs are a mix match of things that do not belong to the same set. This almost simulates a shop or house in the kampung. 

The interior matches the exterior...

The combination of odd shaped and mismatch tables and chairs adds to the ambiance. The walls are also non painted and non plastered. The A/C ducting were "concealed" using zinc roofing, one wall was "painted" using newspaper and the toilets had old school Spy Vs Spy comic decorating the walls.

They even took the effort to decorate the entrance door with a Fat Spoon as the door handle and they also got a really cool, old looking door as the entrance.

The food was decent but I completely forgot what we ordered since I didn't take any picture of it. Bare in mind we went to Fat Spoon almost 2 months ago and that was how long it took me to shoot all 36 exposure in the roll, get it developed and ask my colleague to scan the films.

Since the film was also 8 years expired and kept in terrible conditions, all the shot was horribly underexposed and lucky with the miracles of new technology I was able to restore and pic some photos.

By the way while in Fat Spoon I created a big hoohaa and it was series of very unfortunate events that contributed to it. My camera bag was on the floor and as I was reaching down to pick up my lens, it slipped my hand and fell onto the floor. First time I ever drop any of my lens ever. I was so "kan chiong" with my lens that while trying to save the lens from the floor, I pushed the table a little to hard and the 2 tables separated. Unfortunately, there was a glass cup in the middle of the 2 tables and it dropped and disintegrated into a million pieces. Once of the million pieces got horny and decided to give Amy a over bit. It actually flew and stabbed Amy in the feet.

Lucky it was just a small injury and Fat Spoon gave her a plaster, swept all the glass away and didn't even ask me to pay for the glass. Highly recommended to head to this place :)

From photography to Makan

It has been a while since I went out for a photography trip, this weekend when Amy was in Singapore, De Way invited me to go KL walk-a-bout and I said yes. Woke up at around 715am and first indication that it wasn't going to be a good day for photography was when it was really cold. I looked out the windows and it was a very very gloomy day. It wasn't raining but it was super clouded over.

Unfortunately at around 745am it started to rain which ruined our plans to go for a photography trip, so we did what all Malaysians will do. We turned a bombed out photography trip to a makan trip. The night before while discussing about where to go for breakfast, De Way said he will bring me go and eat the famous Roti Babi at Dang Wangi.

This place has been open since 1928 which makes is 88 years old now. Apparently they started out somewhere on the Karak Highway and then the place we went is the second outlet. The shop they are in really looks like they have been opened for a long time now.

The menu is the old style menu board where it is a white board and they can easily rub the price in case there is a price change. The interior of the shop reminds me of coffee shops in my hometown as well. It is the original thing and not those kopitiam trying to looks like old coffee shops.

They have 2 big mirrors on each side of the coffee shop that is very common in coffee shops in the yesteryears. Now enough about the deco, the whole reason we came to Yut Kee was for the roti babi.

When people mention roti babi, the first thing that I think about is the roti with bakwa and pork floss. However the roti babi we had was completely different. The roti babi at Yut Kee is basically a piece of pork meat stewed and then wrapped in bread. The bread is then dipped in egg and then deep fried. It taste pretty good but it is very very oily. The egg and the bread soaked up all the oil. De Way also ordered the Hainanese Chicken Chop and also a portion of roti bakar.

 

The Hainanese Chicken Chop was really nice, the sauce is light and the chicken chop was nicely fried. In my opinion, the Hainanese Chicken Chop is much better then the roti babi. The roti bakar was also pretty good as the kaya was nice and tasty. De Way told me the other famous food from the shop is the Swiss Roll.

In my opinion the Swiss Roll tasted just like normal Swiss Roll only. The special thing about this swiss roll is that instead of using cream in the middle, they use Kaya. It was pretty good.

Just before heading off, I caught sight of a cute little baby having his breakfast as well.

The coffee they have here is also pretty decent. One of the better hot cuppa local coffee you can get. Nice and creamy as they use both evaporate and condensed milk and with all that still got the kick of the coffee. Just beside our table there is a notice.

What I do not get is why only after 11am they do not allow people to  bring in external bought food.