[10.9.2012] Botanical Restaurant Bangsar Village II

It was the Madamme's birthday the other day. Since she loved vegatarian food, and with a little bit of research, I found a nice new restaurant that featured an all vegetarian selection and it was run by the BIG Group. We have always been happy with the BIG restaurants so we decided to give it a try.

The restaurant was located  in Bangsar Village II.

We started with some bread and ordered the Portobello Mushroom Burger and the Palak Paneer. The Portobello Mushroom was great and quoting the Madamme - "its Nice!" is what she said and I too must agree with her as the bread was soft, the salad that accompanied it was interesting with sea weed drenched in sessame oil made it just oh so delightful..

However I must say that the Palak Paneer was so so and the Lasagnia was great but I fel that the sea weed tucked in between kinda spoiled the taste.

All in all this was a nice place and it had an 'out door' kinda garden which was located inside the mall which made it more pleasant. To those who have never been to Malaysia or tried to have a decent meal  in the open air, please be warned that Malaysian weather can get too humid to enjoy the simple things in life like the food.

Anyhow, I ordered the mushroom burger which actually tasted quite good even without the meat! But i guess sometimes its not the meat that people sell.. Its the sizzle..haha

I do recommend this restaurant if you are keen for something different!

Review:
Ambience/Decor 5/5
Service and attention 4.5
Food and Taste 4
Price 4/5 
Probability of frequent returns 4/5 (the vegan thing wasnt really for me and paying almost full price for a vegetarian alternative seems high but I dont mind having it from time to time.)

[28.9.2012] Short and Sweet Malaysia

The other day I had an invite through facebook by an old pupil mate of mine from my days in the law firm.

Anyhow, what she wanted to invite me for was a musical theather that was to be shown during the Short and Sweet Malaysia show. It turns out that she's the director of one of the plays and and with a slight twisting of the arm, she managed to get me interested enough to go and along with that I managed to convince a few more people and together we went to catch the show.

So what's short and sweet? Well basically Short & Sweet is a set of 10 minute plays which is centred around different themes and genres. Its promoted as the biggest short play festival in the world and it orignated in Australia. The current one in Malaysia is into its 5th year and frankly, I dont think i have ever heard much about it but I was really glad that I have been invited to attend one.

The one that we were invited for was for the musical category which had 6 different 10 minute plays and our friend was the director of the 5th Play for that night.

So, the play was held in KL Perfoming Arts Centre in Sentul which is housed in a wonderful garden like area which is really nice to see during the day. But the building where the show was held itself wasnt bad either.

The ticket counter/office..

Main Foyer.. Very Airy.

Anyhow, for the Short and Sweet festival they were playing 6 different plays back to back so all you do is sit back and watch for 1 hour. The following was played..

1. Hah!

A musical about a skinny girl trying to be thin and wanting to commit suicide. So she goes to the extent of being bulimic and then another gal played if i remember correctly it was a guy (Cool) who loves her curves..

2. Detention

This is an interestinng musical played by 3 characters in detention (1 Boy and 2 Girls) where 1 girl is trying to entice the  boy (who is into his masculinity and quite appealing i guess) to 'pop the cherry' and the other who is the girl's friend who comes out of the closet to tell the girl that she's loved her for a very long time..(SHOCKING!).  This one was very interesting and fun..Very 'Glee' like to me.

3. The Quest

This is supposedly a play about love and want in a renaissance period-ish tavern theme which I didnt really get. I see that this was really a professional do but lacked the fun-nes of the other plays.


4. Background Music

This is a musical about a guy who is desperate to go on a date and calls an agency to go for a date auction in the name of 'charity' (the real one not the name of the girl.. hehe) and the musical's come in the form of the jingle's for the ads and the in between commentary by the guy.. I liked this one as it was fun to watch and the main character pulled it off well with him playing the boy who just had confirmed his first date and the jitters all along with it. hehe.


5. Disorder in the Court

Well this is my friend's play and its played entirely by legal practitioners and its about the ' trial of the century'  and how a contagious singing disease spreads and causes disaster or havoc in the court. hehe.

This one is rather funny for me as I was a former practitioner myself and I can really imagine how this would end up if it happened to some of my cases.

6. The GeongXi Is a Vamp

This musical is about a family of  vampire/banshee who are welcoming the return of their son who came back from overseas after studying about fashion as he was supposed to go to trasylvania and actually went to Pennsylvania. Check out the makeup on some of them.. really cool and scary haha

This one is really funny as the ghosts were portrayed as traditional chinese vampire/banshee who cannot accept that their son has come back as the above.

A video of the show can be found here.

From my understanding, this show won the show and I guess you can understand why..

But I really loved most of the shows and can relate to some of them!

A good part about the Short and Sweet Malaysia 2012, is that there are several categories of prizes and one of them is based on the audience vote and after you cast your vote you can get a chocalate bar from one of the sponsors and for some reason there were a lot of lawyer's there that night hahaha...

Anyhow some extra pics I took.

Us with the director! ( Me, Hui Ying (The Director) and Larina)

Now that I know its an annual thing, I cant wait to go the next year's Short and Sweet! :)

[27.9.2012] busy days

Been very very busy nowadays. Boss asks me if i feel pressured.. Of course i do!

Anyhow i tried this the other day..



It was ok i think. Not great.. But not bad either. I still prefer the prosperity burger better. I love the taste of meat.. Anyhow, my friend said that this burger tastes too sweet and i sort off agree. Theres the sweet taste, but it aint too bad.. Hehe.


Anyhow i'll post more updats soon!

[21.9.2012] Melaka Trip Part 2

So hey.. continuing on from the first post..

Along the banks of the Sungai Melaka (Melaka River) there were some historical sights and excavations which I had shown in the earlier post. If you keep walking along in you will come upon a bridge which takes you across the river and on to the other side which has Jonker Walk.

"If this is the first time to Melaka, you must go to Jonker Walk".. thats what friends and colleagues keep telling me.

Well what's at Jonker Walk? Basically its a market of some sorts that situated in between these old authentic shop houses.  These buildings basically date back to the Baba and Nyonya period in Melaka. Baba and Nyonya are simply  peranakan people who were originally chinese immigrants who came around during the British Colonization in Melaka.

So when they said that Melaka was a heritage site, this would also be part of it as you can see how some of the old buildings were and how some shops had actually bought the old shop houses and totally made it into something better!

view when crossing the bridge

 So when you cross the street, you will be greeted by this creature. Its a dragon thats hung up and actually shoots water out of its mouth at certain periods of the day.

If you head to your left after crossing the bridge, you can find Hard Rock Cafe Melaka and get some souveniers for yourself.. (seems like one is popping up everywhere nowadays)

So what's in Jonker Walk you might ask? Well basically its a market thats very culturally themed. You can find things like pop-up cards (very pretty), magnets, Chopsticks with family surnames on them (suitable for your chinese friends or loved ones) and also food! 

The market

Chopstiks with chinese surname in chinese characters

Chinese money packets to give to people (used often during weddings in lieu of gifts)

When walking along Jonker Walk/Street you may find that a lot of the shops have been converted into restaurants and cafes and also boutiques selling unique T-shirts...

Unique boutique, they bought the whole length of the shop but they did not allow us to take pictures.. but take it from me, the interior looks awesome! Some parts had been renovated and some parts were kept authentic. The spiral staircase is interesting. 

A unique bistro.. u walk in and it opens up to a nice comfortable looking courtyard of sorts.

this is the famous chicken rice ball shop in Jonker.. The place was closing up for the day.

Unfortunately when we arrived some of the best shops had decided to call it a day or had already closed before we got the chance to try out the food. And seriously Jonker Street is pretty warm even at night.. So i dont recommend any thick clothings... T-shirt and shorts are recommended here.

As we were walking along, we noticed this nice stall selling cards.. The interesting bit about this card was that it actually can be folded up and opened up again.

As it was getting kind of warm, we went looking for this famous shop selling cendol or ice kacang which everyone seemed to recommend.. But again we managed to only see the door as it too was closed.

Closed shop...

we did however manage to go get some ice kacang from the shop next door which is also good and had a long enough line for us to be tempted to try it out. Check here to see how it really looks like. 

Manggo cendol and normal cendol.. 

I do recommend anyone coming to Melaka to try out the cendol as compared to the ones in KL, the gula Melaka here is damn thick... It was a pleasure having some chewy morsels together with the ice and coconut milk. 

After resting our tired feet and cooling down with the cendol, we decided to head out of Jonker Walk and go see the other sites around Melaka Town from the other side of the river. The hotel that was situated on this side of the river is actually a nice one. I would wonder what it looks like on the inside. 

So crossing back from Jonker we found ourselves across from the Stradhuys Building which is the old Dutch dwelling that was left behind. The dutch had built several buildings and coloured them red and as can be seen by the pics below it still looks nice.

You can enter the buildings during the day but as we were kind of late, we missed out on that chance too.

All in all the trip was a great trip and allowed me to finally say I've been to Melaka! haha.. 

But my recommendations when going to Melaka is to go early and have some small understanding of what happened here and who had conquered or colonised the place and what was the major landmarks left by them.

Also I recommend for you to wear light clothing that wouldnt allow you to get too hot as the place is freaking warm. As a Malaysian I can tell you that its warmer than normal there.  But I do recommend the place for people who like culture and walking around to see stuff. Cuti-cuti malaysia peeps!