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Abduction – PETRONAS & AMG

Check out this video from PETRONAS Motorsports:

This is the follow up video that finally reveals the highway incidents in Germany and what its got to do with PETRONAS Motorsport’s Liquid & Metal.

The car’s power and ability in zipping through the city evading the alien mothership and its drone is born from a partnership between PETRONAS and AMG. It’s a sweet machine and I’m sure we’ll find out more about this soon enough. In the mean time, enjoy the video.

KY reviews – Jawbone Up usage experience

While I have a little bit of reputation when it comes to food, I’m actually also quite an active person with a healthy dose of gadget addiction. The active part (4-6 hours of futsal/badminton per week) is what’s allowing me to eat whatever I want, thank you for asking.

I keep track of my workouts with Endomondo (runs on Android & iPhone, or even just web). While the application tracks outdoor running/cycling very well, it doesn’t do a very good job for in-door activities that I usually partake, I usually ended up manually logging in those workouts.

This is where Jawbone Up comes in, this is my review of it after 2 weeks usage.

Jawbone Up in my wrist, and charging via supplied adapter

WHAT IS JAWBONE UP?

Jawbone Up is basically an wristband with a concealed battery, vibrator, and g-sensors that serves as a pretty sophisticated pedometer+alarm+sleep meter all rolled in one.

The gadget is made by Jawbone, a company most famous for their higher end bluetooth headsets.

THE HARDWARE:

The finishing of Jawbone Up is a rubber compound that felt pretty comfortable on the wrist, the wristband comes in quite a few colors but apparently at the time of purchase, Machines stores only carry blue & black versions. I chose black just because it’ll match with pretty much all outfit.

One end of the wristband is an operational button, and the other end is removable for when you synchronize with your phone (Android/iPhone), or when you need to charge the internal battery. A separate dongle is supplied for charging purpose.

I had hoped that no dongle is needed, but I supposed without which there’s no way to maintain the elegant & minimally intrusive design. A single charge (an hour or so) keeps the Jawbone running up to 10 days, so you don’t really need to bring the dongle everywhere you go, chances of losing it is thus quite minimal.

I can live with that.

Jawbone Software – overview, trends, and lifeline

USAGE & SOFTWARE:

Jawbone Up basically tracks three different facet of your life – MOVE, SLEEP, and EAT.

MOVE:

MOVE is where the pedometer comes in, it tracks how many steps you take and how you measure up to the 10,000 recommended steps per day. I’ve tried this with other form of pedometer but Up makes it a lot more accurate and much easier since it’s on my wrist all the time.

There’s also a “stop watch” function to record length of workouts. For example, I now know that during my 2 x 1 hour futsal session last night, I took 10,268 steps that equals to about 8.3 km and burnt 809 cal (measured based on published MET values). My total for the day was 18,210 steps. Good job KY!

This is a valuable and new information to me, I had no idea how my futsal session translate to distance prior to using Up, GPS based app such as Endomodo would never work indoor nor it is advisable to use the phone while playing contact sports.

There’s also an Idle Alert function that you can set to vibrate the wristband whenever you idle for too long, as reminder to start moving your ass. This is a feature I don’t use though.

SLEEP:

This is my favorite part of Up, and also one that other competition such as Fitbit and Nike+ FuelBand does not provide. There are some phone application that provide similar functionality, but who’d really want to sleep with a phone strapped on their arm?

When you get in bed, press the lone operation button to switch Up to sleep mode (shown by a moon LED), the wristband then tracks how long stay in bed, the length of time it takes for you to finally sleep, and the amount of deep sleep & light sleep.

I take this data and try to improve my sleeping pattern, it also basically let me know if my fatigue is simple due to lack of sleep or something else. Very neat.

To swith back to MOVE mode, simply press and hold the button again when you’re awake. Pretty simple operation really.

logs food, smart alarm/idle alert, sleep summary

EAT:

While MOVE function tracks your calorie output, those who want to track calorie intake can do so by utilizing the EAT module. Here you can enter information on the food you have throughout the day. The application comes with a list of dishes and you can even scan the barcode of certain food products to obtain calorie information from their database. A custom list can be made as well.

I find the EAT function quite cumbersome to use, and probably only effective if you tend to eat Western dishes or processed food in limited varieties, otherwise the calorie information is going to be sketchy at best.

I gave up the EAT function after a couple tries.

ALARMS:

The gadget also has two other Alarm features – Power Nap & Smart Alarm.

Both these features wake you up by vibration after a preset amount of time, 25-40 minutes for nap and preset time window for smart alarm. The neat part is that the alarm doesn’t kick in if you’re in deep sleep, thus giving you a better rest and supposedly feeling less groggy. I think this feature is pretty neat.

REAL LIFE USAGE:

My user experience with Jawbone Up is pretty good thus far. After a couple days or so you hardly even realize it’s there anymore. Press a button when I’m awake, and another time when I go to sleep. I synchronize it a couple times a day and charge it around once a week.

While the band is resistant to water and supposedly, I usually take it off while showering. Jawbone Up won’t survive well if you bring it for a swim, but showering, washing hand, and running in the rain is supposedly okay.

SOCIAL:

On the mobile app, you can also connect with your friends and share information of your MOVE/SLEEP/EAT. The application connects to your phonebook and facebook account to find Jawbone users in your friend list. You can customize and hide certain or all info as well.

You can also comment on your friend’s activities as well.

WRAP UP:

I got the Up for RM 469 from Machines, not exactly a cheap toy, but so far I’m quite happy with the functionality of the device and its overall construction.

The mobile application, while beautifully designed and sleek looking, relies on data connection and seems to not have a very good caching function. This sometimes results in laggy operation when trying to view your own “Life line” or friend’s updates. I also wish that there’s a web interface (you can download your personal raw Up data from Jawbone’s website) to allow better visualization and perhaps ability to input EAT data more easily.

That being said, I’m satisfied with Up and do think that it is something you might want to check out if you’re interested in tracking your activity & sleep 24/7, for without knowledge of self you wouldn’t know where to start improving.

KY eats – Jap & Thai Cuisine at PLOY, Clearwater, Damansara Height

A couple days prior to General Election 13, we were invited to a food review session at PLOY to sample some dishes from their new menu.

According to their website, PLOY means Gem in Thai. It is then this pretty unique contemporary fine dining restaurant’s aim – to have their dishes be true gems of Japanese and Thai cuisine.

PLOY at Clearwater, Damansara Height

PLOY is located at Clearwater Residence in Damansara Heights. Parking is a pretty painless affair, there’s an underground car park in the building, and it also seems like you can park on the streets just outside of it, though legality in that is questionable.

The restaurant itself is tastefully decorated and has two separate dining halls, a fully air conditioned area, and another half outdoor for alfresco dining.

there are some interesting drinks on the menu

There’s a full bar at PLOY. Beer, liquor, cocktails, coffee, and several other rather interesting drinks can be ordered. My drink for the night was Apple Sour, basically fresh apple juice with sour plum in it, very refreshing. Fraps, cappuccino, and Thai ice tea were reportedly pretty good as well.

tuna wakame salad, golden needle salad

Dinner started out with a couple different types of salad. Tuna Wakame Salad (RM 23) comes with chunks of tuna cubes, avocado, and sesame in shoyu dressing, while Golden Needle Salad (RM 15) with tofu, avocado, broccoli, and wafu dressing.

Due to the pretty distinct taste of avocado, the two salads ended up more similar than different, but not in a bad way. I love the way they deep fried the string mushrooms, and if you were to choose a salad, I’d recommend the golden needle, tastes as good, and cheaper too.

tempura surprise, kabocha tempura

Tempura Surprise (RM 15) is a dish with questionable usage of one of my favorite fish – seabass. The fish is wrapped in oba leaf, and then deep fried. It was a surprise alright, but not exactly in a commendable way. The combination did not work well even though I’m a fan of both major ingredients. I think they should re investigate this dish.

On the other hand, Kabocha Tempura (RM 8.50), or salted egg pumpkin tempura, fared much better. The pumpkin were delicious, and would scored even higher marks if those salted egg yolk sticks to the gourd better. I like it.

crab in wrap – a maki with a hint of tropical influence

Most of us have tried Spider rolls, or soft shell crab maki in Japanese restaurants, this is PLOY’s interpretation with their Crab in Wrap (RM 28). Other than soft shell crab, avocado, sushi rice, and spicy kani, mango can be found in this roll.

To me, this is a perfect blend of Thai & Japanese influence, and one that works very well. I love the taste of Thai in the maki, very well executed.

magic puff – with goat cheese, truffle oil, and wild rocket

Magic Puff (RM 32) does not come cheap, but it’s got truffle oil and goat cheese in the homemade crispy pastry with wild rocket. This is a dish that had to be consumed ASAP before the cheese melts into the pastry, and oh it tastes very good! Truffle oil, made all the difference, yums!

the godfather special, pasta from heaven, smoked duck breast with chicken ham pizza

The trio of main dishes we shared were the Godfather Special (RM 22), Pasta from Heaven (RM 28), and Smoked Duck Breast with Chicken Ham Pizza (RM 28).

Godfather Special is a fancy name for a salmon ikura don with avocado, royu and nori (seaweed) in tempura flakes. The flakes gave it a crispy texture in an otherwise pretty average dish. It felt.. healthy.

Pasta from Heaven is angel hair spaghetti with sakura ebi (small shrimps) and flying fish roe  in truffle oil. Again, the truffle oil proved to be the salvation in this one, and I love angle hair pasta, so it worked for me. Though I’d love to have chunks of something else in it, like prawns or .. just something.

The pizza was awesome, I really loved the pizza! For RM 28 this is the real deal, plenty of real yummy duck breast on the really thin crust pizza with avocado sauce. The sprinkle of flying fish roe gave it that extra pop. It was delicious, if you love duck breast, you’ll absolutely enjoy this pizza. I wanted to have more!

sticky date pudding, durian panna cotta, creme caramel

When we thought the dinner was over, our host brought out these three types of desserts.

The sticky date pudding was alright, the creme caramel will satisfy anyone with a sweet tooth, but the durian panna cotta is what I really want to talk about.

It might look uninspiring, but the durian panna cotta was awesome. It’s rich, it’s pungent, and it’s an absolute must for anyone who even remotely like durian. It’s the stuff that should make some people go to PLOY just for the dessert. Try it!

Ivy, Haze, KY, chef Daniel, Marc, Hitomi and others having a good time

So if you’re up to something slightly out of the ordinary, PLOY is a definitely a place to check out. While I can’t say that everything is awesome, there are quite a lot of bright spots in their latest menu. I would also say that prices are pretty competitive for the setting PLOY offers.

Thank you Lennie for the invites.

Address:
PLOY
G-2, WORK@Clearwater,
Jalan Changkat Semantan,
Bukit Damansara, KL
GPS: 3.152327, 101.666762
Tel:  03-2095 0999
Web: ploywithyourfood.com

Fancy Feast for my Fancy Cats

For those of you who follows me on Instagram, it’s certainly no secrets that I have cats as pet at home.

A little bit of a history – it all started out with Cendawan, a male Bengal cat that we bought from a breeder as a 3 month old kitten back in September 2010. Slightly less than a year later in August of 2011, we picked up two skinny stray cats at the neighbourhood, brought them in and named the male kitten Belimbing and his sister Tembikai.

Belimbing, Tembikai, and Cendawan

Over the last couple of years, the stray kittens grew up to have beautiful semi-long coat, and Cendawan packed on a healthy 7 KG. These cats are the masters of the house, we merely happen to be the live in staffs who serves them.

Cendawan was saying, “open em up for me to eat already!”

Each of the three cats have their own traits.

Cen being the biggest alpha male with Bengal’s unique characteristics, is also the most demanding and most responsive of them all. He response to calls pretty much like a dog, and double up as my everyday alarm clock.

Without fail, this ball of fur will head butt me before 7 am everyday asking me to feed them. It’s all convenient and awesome on weekdays, the only small problem is that he doesn’t have the concept of weekends.

Fancy Feast Royale Broth is an instant hit with the cats

Temmi is the princess of the house. Being the most adorable looking thing at home has its advantage. She usually minds her own business but will come around and “make cookies” on my stomach with her sharp claws.

You can never fault Temmi for she can never do wrong. She is also the loudest in the morning, meowing as if the 1 minute wait while I prepare their food is the biggest torture ever. She seems to eat quite a lot but manage to maintain her 3.5 KG slender body.

the dry cat food is their main meal

For a long time, we thought Bing might have been a mute. Turns out he’s just the quietest cat ever. Bing is never in a hurry for food, but perhaps his lack of athleticism contributes to his 5+ KG body size.

Anytime we sit at the couch watching TV, Bing will be the first one to jump on and use my legs as his personal pillow while demanding to be brushed.

Fancy Feast Royale wet cat food gets nom-ed down pretty fast as well

One of the reasons our cats are healthy and have beautiful fur is the food we feed them. I’ve always make sure that they consume wet food in addition to premium dry food. As cats have the tendency to not drink enough water, having only dry food might leave your cats dehydrated most of the time.

Recently I introduced PURINA FANCY FEAST cat foods to them, and as per recommendation, we started out with FANCY FEAST ROYALE Broths. It was an instant hit especially with Cen and Temmi, the gobbled up two packets (comes in 4 flavors) of the broth in no time, leaving very little for Bing.

This is the only soup for cats in Malaysia, and I think it really helps curb the dehydration problem in cats very well.

Main course was the FANCY FEAST dry cat food (450g packets, 3 flavors). Bing and Cen seemed to really enjoy this too. Now these are some fussy cats actually, and the fact that they love these food means that PURINA’s got it right.

Dessert then was a couple cans of FANCY FEAST ROYALE wet food (17 different flavors!). The cats again ate it like it was their last meal. The food looked pretty good, so I actually tasted it a bit myself. It was flavorful and not salty (cats and dogs aren’t supposed to eat nearly as salted as us), I can see why they like it.

KY with cen, Haze with temmi, and Horng picked up bing

These cats make our home come alive and greets us almost every time we come home. If you have furkids like these at home, be sure to feed them and treat them well.

PURINA also wants your cats to try the new FANCY FEAST ROYALE Broths, to redeem free sample (limited to 2,000 samples), go to www.fancyfeast.com.my, fill in your particulars and the free sample will be mailed to you within 4 weeks.

Now excuse me while I give them a laser work out.

Disclaimer: I was paid by Purina Fancy Feast for this post

Thoughts on General Elections 13

Yesterday, 5/5/2013, was the 13th national election of Malaysia, the country I called home. Just like back in 2008, I went cast my votes at SMK Sri Permata for the candidates of PJ Utara parliamental seat and ADUN of Kampung Tunku. Here are some of my thoughts and observations:

Google and the whole world was watching as Malaysian went to the poll. The Google graffiti of the day was cute and appropriate. I’ve heard that it was worldwide and not just for google.com.my either.

At polling stations, we are separated into different “saluran”, apparently according to age groups. However, this was not done in a manner that made most sense, and hence my line (saluran 4) ended up having a one hour queue while some of the other lines had no queue at all. This should be something that’s easy to fix.

Voting process itself was rather straight forward. First we checked our names at ground floor, then at our saluran we present a paper with the number (mine was actually wrongly written, off by 1 digit, human error), have our IC cross checked, the agent will then call our names.

Next was to get our fingers painted by indelible ink, and we then get the ballot papers, one for ADUN and another for Parliament. It didn’t take more than a minute or two.

I didn’t realize that the state of our national schools were so bad. This is SMK Sri Permata in Petaling Jaya, not any old school in rural areas, but the facilities were extremely basic and upkeep were poor. If this is how average schools look like, they seemed to have regressed  since I went to high school back in the 90s in Penang.

The younger generation deserves better. No wonder private education is a booming business.

Even though my line was the longest at the polling station, I did manage to get it done in about an hour. We went to TDH and claimed a free beer for voting (thanks!), and then waited patiently for the results to come in at night.

After dinner, we decided to head to SS2 for a while to see what’s going on at the DAP’s gathering with Tony Pua and gang announcing the results as they come in.

The results were very encouraging, with DAP leading many of the seats they were contesting. Unfortunately there were not able to get the results from PAS and PKR in real time, we turn into Malaysia Kini on mobile for those. We left at around 10 pm when my phone’s battery was running low, and had our hopes and spirit high then.

BN managed to secure enough seats to form government sometimes after 1 am. This was quite a lot later than usual.

Final results were 133 vs 89.

Some observations:

• DAP won 38 in 51 seats contested, with PKR securing 30 and PAS at 21
• BN denied 2/3 majority in parliament
• Independent candidates did not get any seats, it was largely a two way fight
• Many big names previously on BN (or BN friendly parties) fell or did not contest – Raja Nong Chik, Ali Rustem, Zulkifli Noordin, Ibrahim Ali, Chua Soi Lek, Rais Yatim
• This could be the last election for Lim Kit Siang and Anwar Ibrahim
• BN managed 49% of all votes while PR won the popular votes with 50%
• There are many instances of ballot boxes coming in as late as 5 hours after poll closed, some managed to swing closely contested seats to BN candidates
• Banglasian seems like the new ethnic group in Malaysia, there were instances of rakyat stopping alleged “ghost voters” at various stations
• SPR and major TV networks seemed to release BN wins way earlier than PR seats
• State wise PR lost Kedah, managed to retain Penang, Kelantan, and Selangor all with 2/3 majority
• PR managed to make some progress into Johor & Sarawak
• MCA (6 seats) and Gerakan (1 seat), as well as MIC to a lesser extend, become irrelevant. People are tired of race base politics
• While the election seemed dirtier than ever, flow of information were also the best with Twitter/Facebook and WhatsApp
• Many of us gets results through these means faster than even online portals
• Many express dissatisfaction on Twitter & Facebook, declaring that democracy is dead. I personally don’t think it’s dead, but here in Malaysia, it needs cleaning up badly

Malaysia is still very much the country I love, and like many, we will continue to strife towards a true democracy. In the end, though PR did not manage to form government, there were many small victories nonetheless. There are something to build on.

Lastly, I’d like to introduce word of the day to you - Gerrymandering.