Chinese New Year ang pow came early this year for me. It arrived in a form of a lamp post that my car so cheerily embraced with most passion and enthusiasm late last night. The post ended up leaning at 70 degree imitating the more famous tower somewhere in Italy. I’m not sure if TTDI will become a tourist destination anytime soon though.
the night I couldn’t decide to go left nor right
So I was heading from Damansara Utama to pick up Mellissa at TTDI plaza around 2 am last night, happily driving in a leisure speed (everyone’s leisure speed differs). There was a yellow and black kelisa in front of me at the last traffic light before the fateful junction. We stopped for red, and when it was green, I didn’t pass the little CLK, I wasn’t fast.
And suddenly I saw Brunsfield, the indication of the left turn. I tried to turn but the intersection came up too soon, left, no no, right, ahhh brake! brake! brake! crap… BAM!
Tried turning this into a dream so I can just wake up and wipe off the cold sweat. Failed.
I was alert and alright, called Mellissa and then walked out of the car. There were quite a few people who gathered around the side of the road already. Most of them were amazed that I walked away from the scene unscathed. My habit of wearing the 4 point harness at all time saved me.
About 5 minutes after the incident, I suddenly felt like passing out. I had to hold on to the road signs, and actually sat down for a while, only to regain my composure about 10 minutes later.
one for the blog!
Police came pretty soon though, and did the usual checking my driver’s license and IC procedures. Mellissa called Nicholas who arrived shortly. Before they towed the car, I just decided to take some pictures, and one of the policemen actually suggested I should have a picture with the car and he volunteered to be the camera man too, but the picture above was taken by Nicholas as the police decided perhaps Nicholas is a better cameraman.
We took some stuff from the car just before they towed it. Nicholas then fetched us to the police station where I filed a report. The car was towed to the station and photos were taken by this policeman who was supremely proud of the Sony digital camera he was in charged of. We then headed to mamak before Nicholas sent us home.
It was over 5am when I reached home, sore shoulders but otherwise unharmed. Thank you Nicholas for helping out when I needed most. I owe you one.
I am a very lucky man, for more reasons than just being able to walk away from this wreck unharmed.
Gong Xi Fa Cai.
Thanks to the infamous Robb of Nuffnang, I was invited as the “featured blogger” on a sharing session at Italiannese, Mid Valley Gardens. Previous featured bloggers include fehmes people like Cheesie and Cindy , so I guess this blog must be doing pretty decent huh?
Timothy Tiah, Nicholas Chay, Robb Chew, Pinky Tham, Firdauz
So I arrived at Italiannese, Mid Valley Gardens just in time on the faithful 12th of Oct to find a boat load of people who are already getting friendly with each other, and warming up their camera flashes too.
Yee Hou, Sidney (bigboysoven), Rojaks, Superwilson, Simon Seow
The usual suspects from Nuffnang were there. Robb, who engineered the whole event, the boss Tim, Nicholas, Pinky, Firdauz, Chingy, and Yee Hou too. Other friends like Sidny, Rojaks, Simon Seow, Debra & Victoria Foong also attended the event.
Justin Chin, Bryan Lim, Chee Seng, Chee Hong, Ruionkoh
There are other familiar faces I have met during the Nuffnang’s pajama party and the more recent Haloween party who made their way to the sharing session too. It was in all, over two dozen of us filling up an entire section in the rather nicely decorated restaurant.
Jeffro, Anne Marie, Curryegg, KC, Karena Cheow
We went through a round of rather informal self introduction (and I found out some of them are practically half my age @.@), followed by a short speech from yours truly which mainly touches a little bit about this whole food blogging business and a lot more about the constant question I get about my weight (or the lack of it)
Jou Yin, Josephine, Debra Fong, Victoria Fong, Yi May
Just as we were almost done with the talking session, the servers started to bring in the food, which is just brilliant timing wise.
Carlifornia shrimp salad, mini cheesy pizza, quattro platter
We got started off with the quattro platter that includes deep fried risotto balls, fried calamari rings, stuffed mushrooms, and zucchini fritte. Calamari has always been one of my favorites and the one served up here certainly did not disappoint.
The California shrimp salad was a fresh departure from the usual Caesar or garden salad. However, my favorite has got to be the mini cheesy pizza, very thin, crispy, and flavorful.
Sicilian pizza, bread with olive oil & vineger, lamb shank
The Sicilian pizza is some what an acquired taste, soft texture with a heavy mixture of cheese and tomato flavor in a somewhat unfamiliar territory. I wouldn’t say I like it. The lamb shank though, is pretty flavorful and well cooked to a soft and tender texture, I just wish there were slightly more sauce to go with it.
bowls of pasta, chocholate and hazelnut cake
The main attraction of the day was of course, the pasta bowls. I think Italiannese’s idea is a pretty good one, with the smallish servings of the individual bowls you get to taste more varieties.
The pasts themselves were pretty good. My favorite would be the angel hair aglio olio with shrimp. There were even lasagna too.
Chingy is here, I did not manage to capture an individual pic
We concluded the dinner with some hazlenut cake before everyone went off to our separate ways. It was a pretty good session and it was nice meeting you guys!
I went to Yellow Cab Pizza on one of the Friday lunch sessions with the bunch of noobs from Nuffnang a few weeks ago. The second time we went there as a group was also Su Ann’s second last day in Malaysia before heading to the States, so for whatever it’s worth, I dedicate this post to Lim Su Ann (or lil miss Late who just got her first bank account last month, congrats!)
Su Ann and Suet Li posing with the yellow bikes
Yellow Cab Pizza is a relatively new restaurant that actually concentrates more on delivery business than dine in. Seating area in the restaurant is rather small, and to accommodate all of us (Su Ann, Tim, Firdauz, Robb, Suet Li, Barry, Nicholas, Tock) they had to open a whole new section upstairs. We get to be all noisy and rowdy without having to get stared from anyone, best.
wholesome pizzas, slurps slurps
For the bunch of us, I think we ordered 3 x 14″ pizzas. A NY classic, Manhattan Meat Lover, and a Cheese. The place is a bit lacking in choices of drinks, only serving soft drink in cans or mineral water with disposable plastic cup. Then again, they never pretend to have a proper restaurant set up.
The pizzas were really great though, thin crust with very little to spare as far as topping goes. Very wholesome, cheesy, and just plain delicious. We devoured all 3 boxes rather quickly and made the mistake of ordering 3 x 18″ pizzas the second time we were there and ended up having to tapao some back to the office.
we always get to sit at the empty hall upstairs
At Yellow Cab they have 2 categories of pizzas, “classic” goes for around RM 20 for 10″, RM 30-40 for 14″, and RM 47-67 for the huge 18″s (oh wait they have a website and you can even order online: click here). “specialty” goes for a bit more than those. If it sounds a bit more than pizza huts and dominos, it is because they are better, with more toppings and probably uses better ingredients. The lunch costs each of us around RM 14-16 with drinks. Still very worth it I’d say.
yellow cab pizza is actually very close to Nuffnang KL office
Address:
Intersection of Jalan Raja Abdullah
and Jalan Yap Ah Shak,
Kuala Lumpur (next to the Dang Wangi LRT pedestrian bridge)
Kuala Lumpur
GPS: 3.157625, 101.701217
Tel: 03-2694 2003
It was a particularly eventful two week period prior to the start of this month. There were three events I attended, the Nokia N-Gage launch and Happy winner announcement invited by PR extraordinaire David Lian and the Hennessy Artistry at Aloha from Nuffnang thanks to Nicholas.
notice the N96? Jason, Suan, Kim, and Wenqi was there too
The Nokia N-Gage launch fell on the 22nd at Cafe Libre. We were introduced with the Nokia N-Gage gaming platform with their latest games, and I got a free full fledge game for my N82 from the good people at Nokia!
Mobile gaming has actually came a very long way, the graphics on my phone is just as good as the first generation PlayStation console, and you can even hook it on TV to play. As connectivity is everything on a mobile phone, many games also support multi-player gaming via N-Gage arena. You can compare score, play with each other, read reviews and ratings on new games, buy games online, and even chatting up with fellow gamers.
The game that I chose (we were given one free game) was the Space Impact Kappa Base, I remember playing the very same title on Sheryl’s old Nokia monochrome phone some 5-6 years ago when we were staying in Northern Virginia. The graphic is so awesome now and I found myself rather addicted to it. Newspaper is now optional in toilet. Check it out, awesome stuff.
Yeay Kim and I won the newspaper dancing game! (pics from Louis Photography)
Last Tuesday was the Happy Moment winner announcement event at Isthmus (their chicken wing was very good!), Mid Valley North Point. The participants from the top Happy blog entries and Happy videos were presence. I was very impressed with the top 2 videos shown, the organizer was torn between the two and ended up giving two first prize instead. See them here.
Of course, every Happy event comes with fun & games. I won myself some Jusco voucher again. Me and Kim also participated in this standing on newspaper dancing contest thingy and won it thanks to our awesome fit body that are also space efficient. The prize was some Body Shop merchandise that I could actually use as well. Nice!
Aloooohaaaa, party people! (pics from Jack)
Last Saturday’s Hennessy Artistry at Aloha was one of the better clubbing nights I can remember. Free booze all night long (not that I can drink at all), plenty of friends in the VIP area. Nuffnang had 3 tables with a few dozen people at the event, it was awesome.
People on photo:
1: Nicholas, KY, Eiling
2: Rachel, KY, Nicholas, Dree
3: Yap Thomas, KY, Nadia
4: KY & Rachel
The drinks were good, and music pretty decent, but above all, of course, is the company. There were some old buddies like shiang, dree, and new friends whom I’ve met less than a couple times, like chocolate lady Eiling and sister, the lanky Yap Thomas, the party girl Nadia, the drunkard Stephanie Kok, and more. It was fun!
I’m tired.
One of the other places we dined at during the trip to Seremban was this very nice looking restaurant called La Esquina, or “the corner” in Spanish. Naturally, it specialized in Spanish cuisine. The interior of this place is modern yet very cozy, it spots a full bar and has seating areas both in and outdoor. The first Spanish cuisine in Seremban is also probably the nicest decorated restaurant at Era Square.
grilled asparagus wrapped in bacon
La Esquina doesn’t have a huge menu when it comes to food selection, they do, however, serve all sorts of drinks and a variety of tapas. As we were still half full from our very satisfying meal at Kensington, we only had some light dishes at this place.
a full bar and a nicely decorated interior
The grilled asparagus wrapped in bacon slice was a pretty delicious dish. I mean, you can’t really go wrong with grilled asparagus and bacon. The bacon, however, is of the beef variety rather than the non-halal version from pork. Though I think the later might have jazzed up the taste just a tad more, the beef bacon wasn’t a bad substitute.
tapas
We also had fresh button mushroom, mussel in white wine sauce, Spanish warm potato salad, and spicy chicken sausage. The tapas were served with slices of bread to go with the sauce that comes with it. I mentioned that the spicy chicken sausage isn’t exactly spicy for our taste, the owner Mr. Satwant explained that the level of spiciness in Spanish cuisine is a lot less than what we are accustomed to.
basque crab casserole
The last dish served was not tapas, but the pretty unique basque crab casserole. Generous portion of crab meat and some other ingredients I can’t name were baked in flowery crab shells. This dish carries a slightly salty taste that I imagine would taste pretty well with some red wine.
La Esquina is located at Era Square
Tapas at La Esquina ranges from RM8 to RM15, the crab casserole goes for RM18 per pair.
Address:
No. 49, Jalan Era Walk 3,
Era Square
70200 Seremban, Negeri Sembilan
GPS: 2.725641,101.930938
Tel: 06-768 7405
