My Special Day

Today is 1st December 2008. It's the first day of the last month of the year.

Today is a very special day. For me specifically.

It's the day when I get to be one year wiser, one year smarter and one year richer (I am not talking about money here, no thanks to the current economic conditions)

Maybe one year bigger (read fatter) but not one year taller.

And definitely not one year younger. How I wish I can turn back time!

Yes, you guessed it! It's my birthday today!!

So wish me Happy Birthday!

And sing the birthday song.....


This picture clearly shows how I feel when I was 10 years old seeing my birthday cake! I hope there will always be only one candle on all my birthday cakes! LOL

Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me,
Happy birthday to Foong PC,
Happy birthday to me.

Thanks everyone for singing along. I hope you remember to change the word "me" to "you". Ha ha!

Surprisingly, I don't celebrate my birthday. I've celebrated it once when I was small, and once in my adult life, but never again after that.

Oh, of course there will be friends who drop me birthday cards and sms me birthday greetings, but I don't go out and have a meal or buy a birthday cake to celebrate.

Want to know why? Because I'm sick of celebrating birthdays!

There was one year when I celebrated my friends' and relatives' birthdays every month! Yes there was at least one birthday party or dinner to attend every month of that year. Each month, I had to think of what birthday present to buy for my friends. Frankly, I'm sick of it!

So I told my friends that I no longer celebrate birthdays, and that means I won't celebrate their birthdays too. No more birthday presents, no more birthday parties. If they want to hold parties, please don't bother to invite me. Because I sure as hell won't turn up!

Now you may think I'm being arrogant or unkind, but really, not celebrating birthdays does not mean I don't care. I do. I still send my friends birthday cards, or sms them birthday greetings. Sometimes, if I have the time, I would go out for a drink with the birthday boy or girl. But no presents. None. I don't believe in giving presents and then expecting presents on my own birthday.

What about you? Do you celebrate your birthday? Do you feel compelled to buy birthday presents for your friends? Do you expect birthday presents from your friends?

Of Appointments And Food

Yesterday, I had two appointments with my insurance agents.

Yes, a lunch appointment with my AIA agent and a dinner appointment with my Prudential agent.

Now I actually have 3 insurance agents. One from AIA and another two from Prudential. You must be thinking I buy a lot of insurance, but in reality, I don't spend more than 10% of my monthly income on insurance premiums. So why the need for 3 agents? Well, that's a long story and I'll probably talk about that another time.

Anyway, today's post is really about what I ate during those appointments! Surely this is a better topic to blog about, no?

For the lunch appointment, my agent suggested we meet up at Bayu Timor in Taman SEA, PJ. I have been there several times, but this will my first time blogging about it.

Bayu Timor is actually a furniture shop cum cafe and is owned by a lady who is Malaysia's franchise holder of the Famous Amos cookies. All the furnitures displayed are for sale, even the chairs we sat on!





The ambience here was nice and that helped me enjoy the food. Both of us ordered the same dish, that is, roast lamb with potato and vegetables.




I like the meat - it was tender and the mint sauce made it all the more nicer!

We also ordered the rojak which we shared. I used to like their rojak, but somehow this time I felt it was a little too salty.



For my dinner appointment, I did not know where to go but since my Prudential agent was in Taman Tun, I thought we should just meet up at One Kopitiam at Jalan Burhanuddin Helmi.

Not many customers at this kopitiam, which were just fine with me. Anyway, I just had this spaghetti asam laksa which was quite good.



Later that night, I was supposed to meet up with my friend at his house together with a few other friends. We agreed that each of us should bring one food for supper. Something like a potluck supper, if you will.

I could not decide what to bring, but suddenly I had this cravings for curry puffs. So I thought, why not buy some IKEA curry puffs? I simply love their curry puffs! The skin is thin and they are generous with the fillings inside which include soft curry potatoes, chicken meat and a piece of hard boiled egg. Yummy!

I bought a dozen of them. But guess what? The potluck supper was cancelled at the last minute and I was left with all these curry puffs!



OK, if you count properly, the number of curry puffs in the photo above are less than twelve. That's because I and my brother ate the rest of them! Haha!

Well, it looks like I would be having IKEA curry puffs for breakfast, lunch and dinner today.

My Annual Health Check-Up

I went for a blood test today. It’s nothing unusual, just my routine annual check-up. This health check also included a urine test.

The nurse gave me a small bottle and asked me to collect my urine in it. Now I don’t know about you, but I always find it a little uncomfortable pissing into a tiny bottle. I am so used to pissing into a much bigger container, like a toilet bowl for instance.

I remembered the first time I did this many years ago. I was completely new to collecting my own urine then, so when the nurse gave me the bottle without any instructions, I asked her “Er, what is this for?”

“For the urine test.” she said, not looking at me.

“Er…urine? My…my urine?” I stuttered.

She looked at me and said, “No, MY urine. Of course it’s your urine! And I can’t do it for you.”

Smiling sheepishly, I took the bottle.

I was about to head for the washroom, but stopped myself short.

“Er...how much should I collect?” I asked her.

“Half the bottle will do.”

Then as if I did not understand her, she spoke in a firmer tone.

“NOT full, please.”

The trouble started when I was in the washroom. Carefully aiming into the bottle, I let go. But guess what? I must have drank a lot of water before that because I could not stop. Oh no! The bottle was filling up. I got to stop!

It was with some effort that I managed to do it.

Phew! That’s a relief!

But wait! How come I felt a little wet on my hands?

Oops! I must have accidentally spilled some on my hands. Then I realized the outer side of the bottle was wet too.

What a mess! So I quickly capped the bottle and washed my hands and the outer side of the bottle. I didn’t think my mom would be too proud of me that day if she knew how I messed up!

And then I noticed something. The bottle was more than three quarters full. I remembered the nurse said I only need to fill half the bottle.

So I uncapped the bottle and poured out the excess urine. But guess what? In my haste, I poured out a little too much! Now the bottle was less than half filled!

I was like, what the f.....!

Well, what was I to do but to make a second attempt at filling the bottle? I did it expertly the second time, with no spilling and right on the half way mark. Me pretty fast learner, no?

Somehow I don’t think I am the only person who is this clumsy. Just looking at how the nurses pick up those bottles of urine will tell you a lot!

Of course I learnt from my mistakes and have never messed up ever since.

Another problem I have to face every time I go for medical check-up is the blood test. I think it’s more a problem for the doctor than it is for me. Somehow, doctors have a hard time trying to find the vein in my arms where they could extract blood from.

I don’t think I am really fearful at the sight of blood, but when someone tries to extract blood from me, I do get all tensed up and even start feeling dizzy.

It's not a very nice feeling when the doctor takes a long time to locate my veins. It’s even worse when the doctor jabs you and discovers he had poked at the wrong place and then tells you he had to try again! At one time, I actually felt like I was going to black out!

So now, I am much wiser. Each time the doctor want to extract my blood, I will lie down first. By lying down, I feel more relaxed and even if I go dizzy, it’s not too much of a problem.

Well, do you have this problem like I do? I hope you will say yes because I think I am the only one in the world with this weird problem.

Anyway, one thing is for sure, I can never be a doctor or even a nurse for that matter!

Dimsum Brunch at Eest, Westin

Gosh! I think I'm eating too many buffets nowadays! I have to stop spending my hard earned money on all these lavish buffets. Not only are they not doing any good to my pocket, they are also not doing any good to my figure.

Last Saturday, I went with a group of friends to Eest at Westin Hotel, KL for dimsum buffet brunch. I normally don't go for dimsum buffet, prefer to have it ala carte. But my friend tempted me with a 50% discount offer, so off I went!

It was my first time eating at Eest, so I did not had any expectations of it. It was a sit down buffet, meaning we simply ordered as much as we want from the menu and the food would be brought to us.



That's the beef dumpling on top left, followed clockwise with dragon beard prawn ball, xiao loong bao or Shanghai dumpling, shrimp and chicken dumpling with fish roe and har kau or cyrstal prawn dumpling.

I have to say, they were pretty average. The xiao loong bao was not good at all - certainly not their specialty as there were no soup oozing out of it! Although I do not consider the xiao loong bao I ate at Dragon-I restaurant to be very good, they were certainly ten times better than the one I ate here!



These wu kok or taro dumpling were filled with scallop and chicken, but I did not like it either. Maybe the skin were too thick and the ingredients inside too little.



When I saw the mini egg tarts with caramel and banana on the menu, I was very eager to try it! I thought it was special as I have never eaten banana egg tart before. Unfortunately, my first bite of this mini egg tart disappointed me. Maybe I should not expect it to be as good as those from Canton-i or from Tong Kee, but still, I had expected better from an expensive restaurant like Eest!




OK, I have no idea what all the items here are called, except for the egg tart (same as the ones in the photo above) on the bottom left. They were pretty average tasting, no wonder I forgot the names!

Now I really don't know if it's just me, but I did not seem to have any praises for the food here so far! How could it be that bad? But all my friends agreed the food were just so so.

We called for a few more dishes like chicken feet with XO sauce, pan fried turnip cake also with XO sauce, Hong Kong styled chee cheong fun and bean curd skin rolls but I was already too lazy to take any photos as I didn't like any of them! I am not a fan of chicken feet so no comments there! The turnip cake was a bit too salty. The chee cheong fun tasted average, so were the bean curd skin rolls. Nothing was above average to me! What a disappointment!

Looking at the menu, I was hoping the dessert would turn out to be different. We called all the dessert items on the menu and hoped for the best.



There were 5 items. They were, clockwise from top left - mango pudding with white chocolate and black olive, mochi ice cream, bubur cha cha, double boiled fragrant pear with Vietnamese tea, and sticky rice with fresh mango and coconut ice cream.

Of all the 5, the sticky rice with mango and coconut ice cream was the worst! If I had hoped for this dessert to be as good as the popular ones I had in Bangkok, then my hopes just melted down the drain! I could not believe an expensive restaurant like this could come out with such a poor quality dessert! Look, I did not even bother to take an individual photo of the sticky rice!



The mango pudding was slightly better. Yes, only slightly. The top part was too creamy and sweet! I could not taste the mango in it, so much for calling it mango pudding!



This mochi looked good at first sight. But biting into it and tasting the green tea ice cream inside, I thought it would have been much better if they offered us just green tea ice cream instead!



The fragrant pear in tea dessert was quite good. It was cooling and refreshing and provided a good contrast to all those fried and baked dimsum.



The bubur cha cha turned out to be the saving grace for the desserts. It was one of the best bubur cha cha I have ever tasted! Delicious and not too sweet, with lots of yam and potato cubes and sago in it, I was really satisfied with it.

In fact, I dare say the bubur cha cha was the best food I tasted in the 3-hour brunch, which started at 11.30am and ended at 2.30pm. Even though with the 50% discount, the bill came up to RM50 per person which was not worth it considering the quality of food they served!

How To Make Anyone Fall In Love With You

Hi, everyone! Did the title of my post catch your attention?

So are you excited to know how?

Then let me be your love guru for today.

Before you read further, let me warn that this is strictly for those of you without any steady boyfriend or girlfriend. If you are married, you can still take this lesson but do not act them out other than with your spouse, although I don't see what's the point really.

OK, let's begin. Here are 3 foolproof methods to get anyone falling heads over heels in love with you!

Method No.1 – Gaze into the person’s eyes
Did you know that gazing into a person’s eyes can actually make the individual fall in love with you? I’m not exaggerating here. In 1989, an experiment (Kellerman, Lewis and Laird) was conducted whereby two opposite sex strangers were asked to gaze into each others’ eyes for 2 minutes. The conclusion? Passionate feelings were produced between the two strangers.

You can try this with the person you want to attract! When having conversation with your intended person, look him or her directly in the eyes when speaking and listening. Don’t look elsewhere! This way, you can engage this method without being obvious!

Now that you know this, if you ever find someone keep gazing into your eyes while talking to you, then you know he or she is trying to attract you. So if you do not want to fall for him or her, you had better look away!


Method No.2 – Bring along an attractive person of the opposite sex
When you want to meet the person you wish to attract for the first time, bring along an attractive person of the opposite sex with you. The person you wish to attract will feel less confident with herself as she compares herself with the attractive person accompanying you.

Approaching her when she is not feeling very confident will make you appear more attractive to her. This is natural human behaviour. We often feel others more attractive when we feel less confident with ourselves. This is the time to be flirtatious and friendly with her!

Logically speaking, do not of course, attempt to bring a friend of the same sex as you and who is more attractive than you. The person you want to attract may end up attracted to your friend instead!

However, this does not mean you should bring someone very unattractive with you, whether he or she is of the same or opposite sex. The person you wish to attract may associate you with him or her and find you unattractive. This is known as the Law Of Association in human behaviour.


Method No. 3 – Make use of emotional arousal
This tactic alone may get you more dates than any new hairstyle or outfit or job!
Have you ever seen a mismatched couple before – where the wife is good looking, but the husband is extremely unattractive, or the other way around?

They probably met somewhere when the better looking husband or wife was nervous, apprehensive or excited.

You see, when we are nervous or excited, our body produces adrenaline. In fact, any state of heightened arousal like fear, excitement and even exercise produces adrenalin. Anytime a person is aroused, his arousal will in part be attributed to whomever he is with. This is the foundation of human behaviour.

So if you want to attract someone, try and do it when you are both in a situation where he or she is emotionally aroused.

Using one of the methods above will give you a better chance to make that someone fall in love with you. Use all 3 methods and you are almost certain to succeed in getting him or her to fall head over heels in love with you!

Did I come up with all these? I hope I did, but unfortunately, no. Even a love guru has his own guru. And my guru is David J. Lieberman, PhD who authored this book called "Get Anyone To Do Anything", which is where I got all these information from.



Perhaps you may want to get this book as it teaches you more than just making anyone fall in love with you, though that's a good start, don't you agree?

Guess Where I Ate This!

I'm busy, busy, busy!

So busy I don't know if I can even find the time to complete this post.

Well, I guess if I make this post really really short, I am sure I will be able to make it!

So let's just play a guessing game today, shall we?

Since a lot of you like to eat, and like to read blogs about food, what I'm going to do today is post this picture of the food I ate for lunch yesterday. Here it is...



It's fish noodles with tung fan (glass noodles), fish cakes, carrot slices and yau mak (romaine lettuce) in clear soup.

Now all you do is just guess where I ate this! Easy?

Hints : The restaurant is somewhere in Petaling Jaya, and they don't use preservatives and boric acid in their food.

On the subject of boric acid, do you know it is still widely being used in the Malaysian food industry despite it being banned as a preservative long time ago?

According to this report, the concentration of boric acid in Malaysia was found to be highest in yellow noodles, followed by fish ball, wantan noodle, koay teow noodle, lai fun noodle and loh shee fun noodle.

So if you love noodles and fish balls, you may want to eat those without boric acid like at the place I went to. Now, let's see if you can name the restaurant and where it is located. Have fun guessing!

GOOD NEWS!! The first person to give the correct answer will get a RM10 voucher to dine in Sakae Sushi. Please note you must give the exact name of the restaurant and its location, but not necessarily the road name. You may guess more than once, but only your last answer will be considered, UNLESS no one answered correctly. Sorry only Malaysians eligible for this prize. GOOD LUCK!!

My Very First Jogoya Experience

In my last post, I intended to blog about my dining experience at Jogoya but ended up blogging about art sculptures and Vietnamese oil paintings, of all things! I am not even good at art to begin with, but then to appreciate art, you don't have to be good at it, do you?

Anyway, let's get back to what I really wanted to blog about, and that's Jogoya buffet at Starhill. I know, countless bloggers have already blogged about this wonderful dining place. But that's them. Now it's my turn. Anyway, it's my first time in Jogoya so I really have to blog about it.

If you read my previous post, you would know that I and my friend went for some window shopping at Pavilion before we went to Jogoya. It's the natural thing to do as we had 2 hours of time to kill. Well, were we glad we did that because we were really hungry after all that walking in Pavilion! So when we reached Jogoya front entrance at about 5.30pm, we were all ready to eat! But you can't go in unless you pay first. That's right! You have to pay before eating. That's how it is with Jogoya.

Looking around, I was amazed at the amount of food and the varieties available. Although Jogoya is primarily known as a Japanese buffet restaurant, it actually offered much, much more. There were in fact so many choices of food, I was totally at a loss at what to eat!

Luckily my friend had eaten here before and she guided me around.

I started with the lobster salad, escargot, lobster and slices of abalones.



The lobster salad was delicious! I took a few more rounds of that later, but had to be careful not to over do it, because there were many more food waiting for me!

There's one drink that no one will miss in Jogoya and that is the coconut drink. It was so popular I could see that every table had at least one coconut on it.



As for me, I found that I could not stop drinking it! It was just so sweet, cooling and refreshing! My friend promised me that by the time the buffet ended, I would have drunk from at least 3 coconuts. And you know what, she was right. As it turned out, I took a total of 4 coconuts! I wish I could ta pau (take away) them and stock them in my fridge at home!

Next, I went for my favourite Japanese edamame beans, genki handroll, sushi and some Japanese vegetable mix.



Notice I took another round of the lobster salad (in between the edamame beans and genki handroll) in the photo above!

Oh, before I forget, there's this very tasty Chinese herbal soup I must tell you! I forgot to take a photo of it, but it was absolutely delicious! You know those nice soups with chicken, red dates, kei chee (gojiberries), yuk chuk and pak khei. Except for this one, I tasted a hint of ginseng in it as well! It was like those home made Chinese herbal soup that you would love to drink during those cold, wet rainy days.

Next, I went for the lamb, garlic oyster and the crab otak-otak. I didn't quite like the otak-otak, though.



Then I had some satay, crab, prawn and unagi. Oh I love the unagi! I took lots and lots of unagi because I knew how expensive this meat was when I ordered ala carte at Japanese restaurants!



I did not forget about the sashimi of course. How could one forget about sashimi in a Japanese buffet? I love the raw fishes and the scallops!



If you notice, that's my second round of edamame beans ( I just love them!) and my third round of the lobster salad! And then there's the pei dan or century egg with slices of pickled ginger.

Sorry some of the photos did not turn out well here. I guess the environment was a little dim and it was a bit tricky to take photos using my Sony Ericsson C902 handphone as it does not work very well in dim lightings.

Oh, if you love wine, then I have got good news for you! Here in Jogoya, you can have unlimited, free flow of red wine and other types of alcoholic drinks! Some may say these are cheap wines, but I don't really bother too much as I'm not an expert at drinking wines!

Although I am not that much of a drinker, I still helped myself to a glass of red wine and a glass of mai tai. I also drank this drink called African Coffee - I really do not know if it's just coffee or it was another alcoholic drink as I tasted a hint of alcohol in it.



That's the mai tai beside the red wine. It tasted a little bitter at first, but I gradually found it to be very smooth and nice! Expert wine drinkers may scoff at my praises, but you would have to excuse me as I am very much an amateur when it comes to wine.

As I am not a drinker, I can get drunk easily. Normally before I get drunk, I would feel hot inside my body. Surprisingly, after drinking 3 different types of alcoholic drinks, I did not even feel hot! Could it be that I am getting better at drinking?

Perhaps it was the coconuts that helped cool me down?

Or perhaps it was these guilingao or tortoise jelly that I took?



The black coloured balls are the guilingao and the brownish ball next to them is actually green tea jelly. For the uninitiated, the guilingao is slightly bitter in taste and is dipped in honey to make it more palatable.

At Jogoya, you can eat unlimited amount of these guilingao, which I did! Some say the authentic ones are made from tortoise shell, hence the name tortoise jelly but I really don't know if that's true. Anyway, it helps to detoxify and is especially good for the skin. Perhaps because of its detoxyfing attributes, I managed to drink those alcoholic drinks without getting drunk.

Or was it the combination of coconut and tortoise jelly that did it? In any case, that's a weird combination! But who knows, this might just be the solution to cure those hangovers after a night of drinking!

By the way, I found that the red wine paired very nicely with fruits!



There were lots of nice desserts to choose from and I was spoilt for choice. First, I had these cakes which I shared with my friend.



Then, we had the tiramisu and the pumpkin panna cotta. No, this has nothing to do with terra cotta from China. The panna cotta is actually an Italian dessert made by simmering together milk, cream and sugar and mixing this with gelatin, then letting it cool until set.



The one on the left is the tiramisu and on the right is the pumpkin panna cotta. Both tasted delicious, but the pumpkin was my absolute favourite! I went for a few more rounds of it!

And what is a buffet without ice cream, right? But in Jogoya it's not just any ice creams. No, it's Haagen-Dazs ice creams! The famous expensive brand of ice cream is yours for the taking, in unlimited amounts!



I mixed some grapes with the ice cream. It was really nice! Look, there were just two of us, and I took three bowls! Well, I could have taken more if not for the long queue at the ice cream counter.

That taught me one thing, so here's a piece of advice. The next time you go Jogoya, take the Haagen-Dazs ice cream earlier. Most people would eat ice cream last as desserts at the end of their meals, so there would be a lot of people queuing for it. Eat it earlier and you can avoid the queue!

There were some dishes that needed to be cooked. Jogoya has a very effective system for this. They provide 3 metal clips on every table and all you need to do is to drop the metal clips with your table number on the plate of the dish you wanted to the chefs. They will then deliver to your table once the food is ready. Isn't that brilliant!



I ordered the stingray and salmon to be cooked using these metal clips. But I forgot to take pictures of them! Anyway, they were really good!

I don't think I have tried everything there is to eat in Jogoya. There were simply too many choices, too many varieties!

The dinner was supposed to end at 9.30pm and we diners were supposed to leave to make way for those coming in for the supper buffet scheduled to start at 9.40pm and end at midnight. But guess what? I and my friend did not leave. We sat there chit chatting and as midnight drew closer, we even took a few more rounds of food! No one asked us to leave, so why bother!

Time really flies when you are enjoying yourself, doesn't it? When my friend looked at her watch and saw that it's almost 11.30pm, we thought we had better make our move. My goodness, only after we left did we realise we were in Jogoya for 6 hours! Did we make the money we paid worth its full value or what!

The bill might be a tad expensive at RM101.20 per person, but if I were to eat all those food I ate ala carte, I believe it would cost me much more than that! So in a way, it was not really that expensive after all! Imagine the free flow of wine, unlimited bowls of Haagen-Dazs ice creams, those lobsters, abalones, and I have not even mentioned oysters, although I have to say that the best, juiciest and biggest oysters I have eaten so far were at Lemon Garden Cafe in Shangri-La Hotel in KL.

Currently, there's a promotion of 50% discount for ladies only till 19th December 2008. This offer applies to all day long buffet from Mondays to Thursdays, and lunch and late lunch on Fridays. Now this is what I call sex discrimination! How come men don't get to enjoy the 50% discount?

If the management thinks that men eat more than women, they are wrong! Some women eat a lot, more than men! Not only that, they choose the most expensive foods and eat lots of them!

Now, since they don't check your IC, if I can do a Mrs Doubtfire, I may just take advantage of this promotion! Now anyone wants to help me transform?

Ode To Art at Pavilion

After reading Eiling's post on her visit to Jogoya buffet in Starhill, I was very eager to go there. I had heard a lot of nice things about Jogoya, and had wanted to go there many times but kept putting it off as I felt it was a bit too expensive for me.

However, I really think I should go there at least once. Furthermore, I am a big eater and maybe with the amount of food I eat, it may turn out to be not that expensive after all! With this in mind, I asked my friend who had earlier went with me to the buffet at Lemon Garden Cafe, Shangri-La whether she wanted to go Jogoya, and she immediately said yes!

But before we went there, we decided to go for some window shopping at Pavilion which is located just opposite Starhill. Since the dinner buffet only start at 5pm, we still had another two hours to go so why not walk around Pavilion first?

We stopped by this art gallery on Level 6 of Pavilion called Ode To Art. I came across some interesting sculptures and took some photos. I was not really sure if you could take photos in an art gallery, but as no one was watching, I quickly snapped some.






Look at what this naughty boy is doing below!



Can't see? Let me enlarge the image a little.



Now you see? Naughty, naughty! Hehe.

There were other weird sculptures in red colour, but I thought they look ugly, so did not take any photos of them. OK, maybe I don't know how to appreciate them but you can check them out here.

I thought those oil paintings by Vietnamese artists were really beautiful. There were some that really stood out literally as if they were in 3D. I had wanted to take some photos of them but decided not to as I noticed a staff member was observing us.

So here are some of the paintings I took from Ode To Art website instead.


"Red Tree" by artist Duong Ngoc Son


"Path Of Remembrance" by artist Duong Huy


"Land of Hope" by artist Phan Thu Trang


"Hang Hanh Street" by artist Hoang Long

Aren't they beautiful? I have a friend who loves these Vietnamese paintings and he would go all the way to Vietnam to buy them. It seemed that these paintings were sold very cheaply in Vietnam, a fraction of the price you would find here. Just to make a comparison, he bought a painting in Vietnam for less than RM2,000. When I compared it to a similar painting in Ode To Art, I was astounded to find that it was sold at the art gallery for RM10,000!

If you like to see more of these paintings or other types of art, you can check it out at the Ode To Art gallery in Pavilion or if you are too lazy, just visit their website.

Now I started this post intending to blog about my Jogoya experience, but as usual, got carried away with something else so I guess you would have to wait for my next post to read about it.

Meantime, have a nice weekend, everyone!

Pendulum Power

Amazed. That's what I felt the first time I did it.

I am talking about moving objects with your mind.

No, I am not kidding.

Here's my story...

A few years back, I was introduced to the topic of moving a pendulum by using the power of the mind. A pendulum, by the way is any object that hangs by a string. Like a pendulum you find in a pendulum clock.

However in this case, the object should be symmetrical or round and light weight. What you do is simple. First, just hold the end of the string with your fingers as shown in this picture.



Next, with the power of your mind, and without moving your hand, will the pendulum to swing to the right and then left, to and fro.

Then again with the power of the mind, will it to stop swinging.

I tried this back then, but it was not successful. The pendulum simply would not move. And so I thought it was all nonsense and forgot about it.

It so happened that the other day, I was cleaning up my room when I spotted the pendulum again.

I thought why not give it another try this time?

And what do you know? I made the pendulum swing! I could hardly believe it!

But guess what? After I willed it to stop, which it did, I tried and get it to swing towards me instead. And it did exactly that! It swung towards me, then away from me in the other direction, and then back again. I was like, Oh my God, is this real?

Just to prove it was no fluke, I got it to stop. It stopped swinging almost immediately. I willed it to swing left to right again, and it did! Once again, I got it to stop and willed it to swing towards me and away from me. I repeated this process many times and each time, it did not fail to swing at the direction I willed it to.

So was it the power of my mind? Or did I unknowingly move my hand so that the outcome was what I wanted? I really don't know. Maybe it was both.

Upon further reading on this subject on the Internet, I discovered pendulum can be used to detect water or minerals, to locate lost objects or people, and even to access our subconscious or higher consciousness. This may sound like utter nonsense to many people, or even paranormal to some, but I can assure you there are certainly some truths to it.

Now why don't you give it a try and let me know if you can make the pendulum move?

For more experiments using pendulum, read Test Your Dowsing Skills by Michael Daniels, Phd.

Red Box at The Gardens

Last month, I received a letter from Red Box announcing the opening of their new 13th outlet at The Gardens in Mid Valley City on 30th October 2008. As a token of appreciation, I was given an invitation card to visit the new outlet to enjoy a 30% discount off the total bill.

I thought, wow! That's great! It's been some time since I went for karaoke sessions with my friends and this was a good time as any to exercise my vocal chords again. I quickly called to book a session for 8.30pm last Tuesday after work.

Now the night karaoke session comes with a buffet dinner, so it's just perfect for some good relaxing fun after work. Actually, I prefer not to eat during karaoke, but this time, I wanted it to be more like a relaxing time rather than seriously singing my heart out. Furthermore, I've not been singing for some time and my voice would just sound terrible, if it was not already.

Anyway, I and two other friends reached Red Box which was located at the fourth floor opposite GSC Signature, right on the dot. We were greeted warmly at the counter, which was good because the last time I encountered really rude staff at another outlet at The Curve.



When I enquired how long we could sing, the female staff told us normally we were allowed to sing for 3 hours, but if there were not many people coming in after midnight, we could continue singing till 3 am! We were like, wow! Is that a good deal or what?

In case you think the 3 of us could not sing that long, let me assure you that I've once sang for 8 hours straight. Not that I am a very good singer, mind you. What the heck, if I were good, I would have already participated in Malaysian Idol or some other singing contests! What would I be doing singing in a karaoke room, right? Karaoke is meant for people like me who can't sing well, but who just like to sing for my own enjoyment.

Anyway, we were led to our room. It was rather small but I guess there were only three of us so that's OK. One reason why I was so eager to visit this outlet besides the discount offer, was because it was a spanking new outlet and that means everything would be clean and in good working condition.

However, I did not like the TV screen. It was too small for my liking. Why couldn't they fix a bigger screen? Look, the frame is so much bigger than the TV screen. What a waste of space!



And I have another complaint. I did not like the sound system! The bass sounded flat all the time. Seriously, I think my laptop speaker is better than this!

I have been to other karaoke outlets like Neway Karaoke and Songbird KTV, but I still find Red Box has the best sound system of them all. So it was a bit of a surprise to me that this outlet at The Gardens did not quite live up to my expectation.



Well, what to do? Just make the best of it! I have never really tried buffet dinner at Red Box before. This would be my first time. I have had buffet dinner at Neway before, and I would say they had quite good food and lots of varieties too.

So how did the Red Box buffet fare? These were what I ate.


Fish, lamb and some vegetables.


Prawns and mussels


Crabs and corn


My favourite - salad with some sushi and a prawn in a glass.


A plate of goreng pisang


No buffet is complete without ice cream, so here it is!

Actually, I almost did not get to eat the ice cream, as we were so busy eating and partly singing we forgot the time! The buffet's last call was at 10pm, and it was 5 minutes before 10pm that I realised we have not tried the desserts yet! So I rushed out of our room and got the ice creams! My two friends did not even bother!

I did not find the food all that nice and there were not many varieties available. Red Box buffet certainly could not measure up to the buffet I had in Neway. So I guess if you like to eat good food, head to Neway but if you are more for singing than eating, go to Red Box.

One thing I like about Red Box is that they have the latest songs. I searched for Jay Chou's Dao Xiang and Leona Lewis' Better In Time and found them! I doubt I would find such new songs in Neway or Songbird.

Some of you may know that I don't speak Mandarin, so you must be wondering how come I could sing Chinese songs. Well, that's easy. I have learnt hanyu pinyin before, that's why! Look, I have a collection of Chinese song lyrics in hanyu pinyin - all nicely placed in a file.


The lyrics from one of Tank's song.


Another hanyu pinyin lyrics from Ivana's song


Here's Jay Chou's duet with Lara from his November's Chopin album.

While everyone look at the screen and sing, I have to look at my file on my lap to sing! It's a bit cumbersome really, but that's the only way I could sing in Mandarin!

Carrying the file containing the hanyu pinyin lyrics, nobody would have thought I was going for karaoke! People would think that I am a direct selling agent or something, about to meet up with my prospects.



Now if you go to Red Box and see a person holding this file, you can be quite certain it's me!

So did we sing until 3am? We could but we didn't. Both my friends need to go to work early the next day. Only I alone did not need to wake up early, so I guess majority won. But we still ended up singing until 2am! Well, it's pretty addictive especially when there were so many songs we wanted to sing after having not singing for some time. I did not know how my friends were going to wake up the next day, so the best of luck to them. Haha!

The total bill came up to RM34 per person after the 30% discount.

When we left, I took a picture of the front entrance. Notice it was rather quiet as most people had left.



Well, at least it's still open. The GSC Signature opposite had already closed its doors!

By the way, anyone knows the differences between Red Box, Green Box, Red Box Ria and Red Box Plus?