Hong Kong Sheng Kee Dessert

     This place just opened yesterday at 1 Utama. The boss was standing outside, persuading people to go inside to try his food. He was very persuasive and.............we fell into the trap.

     The service was of the worst order. I have never experienced service this bad. They didn't even get our order right and the wait for food was excruciatingly long.

    They didn't even have the cow sense to serve our drinks first. It was 45 loooooooooong minutes before the Snowy Char Siew Pau starters arrived. Best thing was, there wasn't even any cutlery to eat with. It was just a plate of pau in the middle of the empty table. And the drinks were still not served. I had to ask for the drinks and cutlery again and again and again. The staff didn't even speak a word of English. I switched to speaking Malay and the bloody idiots didn't speak Malay either..........

     The rest of the food came one by one after close to an hour. That is the worst possible way to serve Chinese food. If the food was fantastic, I might have forgiven them. But...........the food was just terrible.

     Look at this horrible looking pork rice I ordered. One look at it and you know it is served with cheap ass rice. You know the horrible type of cheap rice that clumps together and has a bitter taste? Even the neighbourhood chicken rice shop serves grade A, long grain rice, but this so called  Hong Kong thingy place is serving cheap ass rice!

    The rest of the food was so abysmal.......I stopped taking pictures altogether. The beef noodles' soup was cold, the serving of noodles was so small, probably meant for a bird.

     After all that aggro and bad food came the best part. The bill was an exorbitant rm90 for 2x beef noodles, 1x pork rice, char siew pau and Chinese tea.

     My friends, if you treasure your sanity, taste buds and money..........please, please, please stay away from this disaster area.

Fisherman gives this place a big fat F for fail.

New Shanghai Restaurant

       I have been looking for a nice dimsum restaurant for a while now. Walked by this nice looking place called New Shanghai in Pavilion Mall and couldn't help but notice the hot steaming tray of food right at the front. 

       The interior decoration is very nice. It really has that old world, Shanghai feel to it with the red velvet chairs, cobblestone floor, brick walls and all. They got the look and ambiance right. Now, how about the food? 

      This is called Rice Roll Shanghai Style. It's absolutely fantastic. It's like a typical chee cheong fun but they added a superb twist to it, peanut butter sauce! Very unique, very, very delicious. A must try!

    This is Fried Fishball. Nothing special or spectacular. Just normal fishballs but fried perfectly. Very nice without being too fishy.

     This is the Stir Fried Radish Cake. Very nicely fried in a dry style with lotsa crispy beansprouts. Nicely done and delicious.

      Glutinous Rice. Nice juicy piece of chicken and mushroom on top and the sticky rice is just perfect, not too hard and not too soggy. The sauce it's cooked in, is fantastic. Very, very delicious.

   
      This is my 2nd favourite, after the Rice Roll. It's called Beancurd Roll with Thai Sauce. It's beancurd skin with some meat stuffing in a very nice sweet and sour sauce. Very, very delicious.

 

      I also ordered a cup of Jasmine Tea. Pretty expensive at rm6 for a cup of Chinese tea but it was very nice. I also noticed they sell some very exotic and very, very expensive tea. Anybody wanna try this White Cockscomb Tea? Rm118 per 100gm. WOW!!!!! 

      Overall experience was good. Price is reasonable at about rm8 per basket of dimsum. My total bill came to rm52.80 for 3 adults. I will definitely be back for more. I forgot to check if it's halal. Here's the phone number if you wanna check if it's halal. 03-21422833.

    2 thumbs up from the fisherman!

Happy Wife is a Happy Life!

Bought my wife a lifetime supply of SKII cosmetics today. When she's happy, I'm happy. If she's unhappy...........that's it, no more bicycle and gadget collection for me. So, always remember this-

             A Happy Wife is a Happy Life!

The Gravy Factory

      Found another superb place for makan today. It's located at Heritage Lane, Damansara Perdana.

     Nice ambiance, good wifi, good food. 

  I started with the onion soup. It's a massive bowl. Biggest bowl of onion soup I've ever seen. It comes with garlic bread. The soup was superb. It's a chunky style texture like thick mushroom soup. The garlic bread tastes really good in the soup.

   Next up was the Hainan Chicken Chop. I've been looking for a good Hainan Chicken Chop for the longest time. My favorite used to be in Port Dickson but that restaurant closed down many years ago.  I have finally found it. This is the BEST Hainan Chicken Chop. The bread layer is just perfect, the sauce is superb. Nice crispy skin and the chicken is cooked perfectly. Sooooooooo good I ordered another serving to take home.

    This is the Baked Crab. I don't really eat seafood but this was really good. The crab meat is mixed up like a meatball and layed on the crab shell. It's like a giant crab meatball with big chunks of crab meat inside.

   The pricing is quite reasonable. Rm8.90 for the onion soup, Rm20.90 for the chicken chop and Rm20.90 for the Baked Crab. The ice water was free! When was the last time you got free water in a restaurant eh?

     Fisherman gives full approval to The Gravy Factory.

Hutchinson Atom Tubeless, worst tires ever!

   These are the worst tires I have ever tried. They are nothing but trouble. They are also a huge pain in the ass to install and bead on the rims. It also costs a big bundle of money which is not proportionate to the service I have gotten out of it.

I have had 3 failures. 1st failure was a puncture on the very first ride. I patched it but it was unusable as the tire casing swelled up around the hole.

2nd failure was inability to bead and seal even with Stans Sealant inside. 

3rd failure is this delamination of the rubber thread. I just did a 100km ride on the turbo trainer and felt a funny vibration. Checked the tire and what I saw was horrific delamination. 

    This tire is so expensive at rm300 yet it is totally useless. Absolutely useless. Stay away from it at all costs. I'm going back to my good ol reliable Continental GP4000S. 

   

     Fisherman's rating out of 5 Stars? I give it negative 5 stars. 

  

Donutes Cafe @ Kota Damansara

       I looooooove this cafe. It's open 24 hours, 365 days a year. The coffee is pretty good, the pastries are yummy, price is very reasonable. Starbucks and Coffee Bean???? No fight!

       This cup of mocha is only rm8 and it's as good as the one at Starbucks which costs rm15.

    This pastry is called Satay Danish. Looked so good I couldn't resist trying it. It not only looks good, it was deeeeeeeeeelicious. Price is only rm4.30 for that huge thing.

The cup of mocha and a nice, big juicy Satay Danish only cost me rm12.30. Less than a cup of mocha at Starbucks and Coffee Bean. Donutes Cafe rocks! 

2 thumbs up from Fisherman

   

Look honey, IKEA shrank the muffins!

I haven't been to IKEA Cafe for a very long time coz the crowds are just insane. And I HATE crowds. I figured it would be nice and quiet now due to the month of Ramadhan and decided to have my afternoon cuppa coffee and also my favorite blueberry muffins.

True enough, the place was practically deserted. Not many ppl around so I was quite happy to have my coffee there today.

I was happy until..........I saw the size of the puny little thing. The muffin used to be huge. Just look at how tiny it is now. I put the iPhone 4S there to give you a sense of scale.

This is ridiculous! IKEA Cafe used to be known as a value for money place for some decent food. Looks like they have shrunk the muffin and also raised the price. If I remember correctly, the blueberry muffin used to be only rm1. It is now rm1.59.

They have also stopped using proper coffee mugs and switched to paper cups. I hate paper cups! The coffee absorbs the smell and taste of the paper cup and tastes like $#*+! Not only that, paper cups are bad for the environment. Whatever happened to IKEA being an environmentally conscious company?

I don't know if they have raised the prices and shrunk the food portions but based on the muffins, I'd think the food will be the same. I certainly won't be going back to IKEA Cafe anytime soon. It used to be one of my favorite afternoon tea places but........no more.

Fisherman no likey!

Best Char Kuey Teow in Kuala Lumpur

This is supposedly some legendary char koay teow from Penang. It is located at Hutong Food Court, Lot 10, Kuala Lumpur.

They serve 2 types, with duck egg or chicken egg. I like chicken eggs so naturally, I ordered the chicken egg char koay teow. I have 1 word to describe this char koay teow- EXQUISITE

Fried nicely to a non sticky, dry style with an explosion of flavours in the mouth. Just the way char koay teow should be. This is my favorite char koay teow now, I will accept no other.

2 thumbs up from the Fisherman!

Finally found my Mickey Mouse watch!

       I've been looking for a nice classic Mickey Mouse watch for many years. Never found it......until now.

       Classic oyster style case, nice black leather strap and chrome case. Unfortunately the hour and minute hands are not Mickey's hands like the one I had when I was a little boy. But this is good enough. A nice classic look.

      The best thing about it? I got it for only rm15 during clearance sale. I got mine from Cotton On at 1 Utama. Not sure if the other branches have it.

       I've been looking for years and I finally found it plus it's so unbelievably cheap, it's the cheapest watch I have ever had in my life. Super awesome, super cheap, super happy!

Blogger App doesn't work!

Isn't it ironic that a billion dollar company
like Google, who owns Blogger, makes a Blogger App that doesn't work?

If you select a photo from Album, it just results in a black box and when you click Publish......it fails.

It only works if you use the App to take a photo and immediately upload. What a load of horseshit from a billion dollar company.

There are 9 year old kids out there who make better Apps. Come on Google, you can do better than that!

Canon PowerShot G1X MkII

           I've always wanted a nice compact camera with a big sensor and I did buy the Sony NEX 3 and NEX 5, five years ago. Those were groundbreaking cameras back then. Super compact body with an APS-C sensor. However, the lenses were a huge disappointment. The 18-55mm kit lens and 16mm f2.8 pancake lens were terrible. The kit lens was a very soft, everything looked soft and fuzzy. The pancake lens was my favourite 24mm FF equivalent focal length but at f2.8 just didn't cut it for me. It also had a horrible, bulky, screw on flash. The size of the camera wasn't all that compact either, with the 18-55mm lens and flash. It was actually quite front heavy and unwieldy. I sold them off after a while. I much preferred my Leica D-Lux 4 and Lumix LX3. Those 2 lil cameras were fantastic and I've always yearned for a new camera with the qualities of the D-Lux4/LX3 but with a big huge sensor in it. Anyway, let's get on with the Canon PowerShot G1X MkII.

            It has taken Canon a long time but they have finally come out with a superb lil pocket rocket camera. I was quite tempted by the first G1X but it was riddled with flaws. The new G1X MkII is now a dream come true for me. I've waited 5 long years for a camera like it. Here's why I love it so much.

1. Compact body. Fits in my cargo shorts pocket.

2. Big 1.5" sensor which is almost as big as full APS-C.

3. Very nice focal length of 24-120mm FF equivalent.

4. Very fast lens at f2.0-f3.9.

5. Built in pop up flash that can bounce.

6. 2 Control Rings on lens barrel which allows customisation for eg. Aperture, Shutter, Exposure compensation etc.

7. NFC and Wifi with iOS and Android compatibility. The Android phone/tablet app works very well and file transfers are very quick. I haven't tried it with IOS yet.

8. Hotshoe is compatible with all my Canon Speedlites including the ST-E2 wireless flash commander.

9. A nice and sharp, tilting 3", 1.04M dot touchscreen LCD. The tilting LCD combined with the 24mm wide angle lens makes for very good selfies. Don't laugh, I do it a lot and I know you do too. Haha.

10. Solid build. Full magnesium and aluminum construction if I remember reading correctly. Feels like a Panzer Tank in my hands.

11. I also read an interview of the Canon engineers who developed the camera, that the lens unit is actually made to Canon L Lens standards. They just couldn't label it as such because it's a designation allowed on the full frame EF lenses only. I remember there was actually a PowerShot with a red ring and labeled as L Lens but Canon never used the L Lens label on a compact ever again. Maybe it suffered from bad sales figures or something and Canon didn't want to jeopardise the L reputation?

I've only had it for a couple of days and that's all I can think of. I will add more pros and cons about it after using it for another week or so.

Here's some sample pics. I will post up more soon.

Photography, my long lost love.

I have been so into triathlons the past 2 years, I almost forgot about photography, one of the loves of my life. So I went to the dry cabinet, in search of a camera to reignite my love for photography.

This lil Fuji X10's been sitting in the dry cabinet for 2 years. I actually forgot I had it. Dusted it off and took it out for a walkabout the past few days and enjoyed myself sooooooooooo much. There's just something about these lil cameras......pure enjoyment instead of lugging the big huge DSLR and lenses.

I spent the next few days with my X10 and fell in love all over again. Haven't felt the pure joy of photography in such a long time.

Here's a few pics from the walkabout with my darling X10.

I have since fallen deeply, madly in love again. I am back!

Quiznos Subs is in KL!

OMG! My dream has come true. Quiznos is here at last. It's gonna open right next to TGIF in 1 Utama. Everytime I go to Singapore, I have it for lunch, dinner and supper. Now I can have it anytime, any day, at home. Yay!

My long, hard, painful, journey in the fight against cancer.

Today is my 42nd birthday, but I am only 10 years old.

         I died 10 years ago when the doctor gave me the worst news ever. I was knocking on death's door and the Grim Reaper was waiting just behind the door. I was so weak I couldn't even walk anymore. The whole left side of my body was gone. I had lost all feeling and control on the left side of my body. I couldn't feel my left arm, leg and torso. I couldn't even feel the left side of my face. I also lost my left ear to the cancer. Everything on my left side was gone. I also suffered from a massively painful, violent and exhausting 12 hour long bout of hiccups. My spleen was so enlarged, it squashed my stomach, diaphragm, lungs, basically everything inside and the only way my body knew how to react was massive and violent hiccups. I was in so much pain......I really didn't care about living anymore. Death would have been a pleasure. At least then, the relentless pain would stop!

        I always thought I was blessed with strong, healthy, sporting genes. My father was a legendary Malaysian sportsman who is in the National Hall of Fame. I was once a strong and healthy athlete too. I never got sick. I never thought of dying young but now I was reduced to a crumpled bag of bones waiting to die. After the doctor gave me the diagnosis of cancer, my world imploded. I thought it was the end. Yes, I was in so much pain and thought death would be a pleasure but hearing the doctor say it, really hit home and I just broke down and cried and cried and cried.........the whole day.

        Thank God I have the best and strongest wife in the world. She was with me in the hospital, day and night. She was with me at all times, never leaving my side. She knew I was afraid to be alone, very, very, very afraid. I was so afraid of the Grim Reaper sneaking up from the shadows and grabbing my soul. I couldn't sleep at night because there was so much pain even with the painkillers. All I could do was lie in bed and wait for the sun to rise. Besides the excruciating pain, I was also afraid of the dark now. According to statistics, most terminally ill people die during the night. I didn't know it then, but I had developed a fear of the dark. Every morning, I would just sit by the window in the hospital and look out, waiting for the sun to rise. Fortunately the room I was in, had a beautiful view of the Subang Jaya park. I would be so relieved when the sun rose and filled my room with warm, rejuvenating light. The warmth of the sunlight felt like God's blessing and I was allowed to live another day.

        The simple joy of watching and hearing the birds singing in the trees at sunrise was now the best thing on earth, not a billion dollars in the bank, not a big house, not a Porsche in the garage. All I wanted was time, to do all the things I never had time to do. I was a workaholic working 15 hour days and all I could think of was money money money. I said my prayers and I asked God to give me 5 good, pain free years. I needed it to do all the things and say all the things I needed to say to my wife and kids. I stopped everything. I stopped working. I sold off the business. All I wanted now was my dearest wife and kids and the simple pleasure of waking up strong and healthy every day.

        I asked for 5 good years, I have had 10 years now. It might not have been a smooth journey, I was a real bastard to my wife and kids in the first 3 years. I had violent moods swings, massive rage issues and depression. It took me 3 long years to come out of the dark, gloomy clouds of sadness and anger. They call it the "Why me?" stage. I have since learned that it does no good and I am just wasting whatever precious time I have left. I now try and be happy every day and just be thankful for every extra day I get.

        My dearest wife Sally, I LOVE YOU from the bottom of my heart. You stuck it out with me. You steered my broken sampan through the fog of hell, you helped me escape from the Grim Reaper. Most women would have packed up and left in the middle of the night. You took it on the chin for 3 horrible, long suffering years of me being a total bastard. I am so grateful you are still here with me. I wouldn't have pulled through without you. You are my rock, my navigator, my partner, and I am eternally grateful for that. It hasn't been a perfect 10 years but I will keep on fighting. I will try for 10 more good years and then hopefully another 10 more years after that.

 I WILL LIVESTRONG!!!!!!!!

I'm back!!!!!

Hello everybody, after almost 2 long years, I'm back! Been a really busy couple of years training and doing triathlons. Decided to start writing and sharing stories with you guys on my blog again. I will be sharing the story of my long, hard fight against cancer in the past 10 years for my comeback article, so hang on, it'll be up in a while.

Commencal Super 4

Wow! Time flies and it has been more than a year since my last posting here. I've been really, really busy training for the PD International Triathlon 2012. Well, the PD Tri is now over and I finally have some time to write again. In my last posting I told you guys about the MTB I got for my birthday right? Well, here's a picture of it. I apologize for the bad picture as it was taken with a phonecam. It's a Commencal Super 4 in matte black, my favorite color. Hardly 2 weeks went by and I was caught up in upgradeitis disease. The bike was fully upgraded with a Shimano XTR groupset and Spinergy Xyclone Enduro wheels. I was happy for about a week. Then I went for a ride with my friends in a particularly gnarly trail and I wasn't very happy with the 4 inch suspension travel. I wanted more! So I went back to KSH Bikes and looked around for an All Mountain bike that could do it all. I decided to buy just a frame set and forks as I already had top of the line parts from my Commencal Super 4 which I would transfer over. Looked around the shop for a while and I fell head over heals in love with a Limited Edition Team CRC Intense Tracer. But that's a story for another day. Hehehe.

Mountain Biking again, after 16 years

It's been a looooooong time. I've always loved cycling since I was a child. I remember watching E.T the movie and falling in love with those all conquering BMX bikes that did everything including flying over the moon. Haha. I pestered my dad for the longest time and he finally bought me a BMX. Datuk Ng Joo Ngan is a good friend of my dad's so my first BMX was naturally from Joo Ngan's shop in Pertama Complex. My dad didn't wanna spend too much and I got a no name generic BMX that looked like it would fall apart at the very first dirt jump. Haha.

After a while, I wanted a better bike and slowly upgraded the parts, bit by bit. I used to save my school allowance, wash the car, polish the car, wash the toilets and mow the lawn, just to earn money for BMX parts. I studied at St. John's Institution and I would walk to the legendary Sum Ming bicycle shop in Jalan TAR whenever I had enough money for BMX parts. After about 2 years I had completed my dream bike. My pride and joy was a Diamondback Harry Leary with all the nicest parts available.

I used to ride 3-4 hours everyday, after school. I was into BMX racing and also Freestyling. The Wilayah Day BMX race is one of the highlights of the year and I used to look forward to it every year. It all came to an end when I had to go to Australia after Form 5. It was one of the saddest days of my life when I took my fully blinged up BMX to Sum Ming to sell for cash. It was the end of my cycling days for many years.

I got back to cycling when I came home from Australia and my working life began. I was working in the family business in Seremban and it's one heck of a boring town back in the stone ages. There was nothing much in the way of entertainment in Seremban but there were some really nice oil palm and rubber estates just behind my housing area. I was thinking that the trails in the estates would make for some really good cycling. My friends in KL/PJ were also bugging me to get a mountain bike so we could go cycling in Kiara. All of them bought their bikes from KSH in TTDI so I bought my first MTB from KSH too. It was a Kona Sex One, one of the very few full suspension bikes available at the time.

Here's a picture of the Kona Sex One from a magazine advertisement. Looks pretty sexy for a bike from 16 years ago eh?





My friends rode Kona and Gary Fisher full suspension bikes too. Every time we went cycling, the other MTBers would stare at us as if we were aliens riding on UFOs. Haha. Full suspension bikes were extremely rare at the time. I certainly enjoyed my time in the estates behind my house and also the Kiara trails on the weekends when I came back to KL. It was so long ago that the main road going up the Kiara hill wasn't even paved yet.

After a while, life caught up with me and I stopped cycling again. Work commitments, the arrival of my first child, etc, etc. I thought of cycling many times over the years but I just didn't have the time for it. I'm sure many of you know the drill. It was all about money, money, money, work, work, work. I was a workaholic, working 14-15 hours everyday, raking in the dollars. However, my working life came to an end about 7 years ago when I got really, really, really sick. Many doctors were stumped. I was on the brink of death when a doctor at Subang Jaya Medical Centre finally diagnosed me with the Big C. Yes, it was cancer and my world came crashing down. I had all the money in the world but what was the point of having money if I had no life. So I quit everything and decided to just enjoy life as I didn't even know how long I had left to live. I thought of cycling again, to regain my fitness and to fight the Big C. I was much too weak though. My body had degenerated so much. I was a 5' 6" bag of bones at 50kg.

It took me a long time to get back to my normal weight of about 65kg. It was really difficult to regain my fitness as I had lost my left ear before being accurately diagnosed by the good doctor at SJMC. I had also lost all sensation on the left side of my body. My left arm, left leg, left torso, everything on the left was gone and it took me a while to regain some feeling. My left ear was beyond help though. There was nothing the doctors could do. This made it very difficult for me to exercise as I didn't have much feeling on the left and no sense of balance too. You guys who have both ears working perfectly better treasure it. You will be amazed to find out that you can hardly walk with just one ear because it's so difficult to balance yourself.

I managed to overcome all that after a while. I learnt to compensate for the loss of my left ear and sensation on my left side. I could run and go to the gym as part of my plan to regain full fitness again. I was just getting back to full fitness when my world came crashing down again....................... Talk about double whammy eh? This time I was diagnosed with a heart rhythm disorder. I had to have heart surgery and I had to stop exercising again...........

Anyway, it has been 2 years since my heart surgery and 7 years since the Big C. I'm now able to start exercising properly again. Problem is that I gained 10kg after the heart surgery so I started with a 9 week program to regain some strength. The 9 week program ended just before my birthday and my dearest wife bought me a mountain bike. It has been a rocky road but I will never give up. I will keep fighting whatever comes my way and I'm happy to be mountain biking again, after 16 loooooooooong years.