Today on Jalan Ampang...

PMS SURVIVAL TIPS

...Found on Threadless.com

3 images

from http://www.myspace.com/miQmott

ymca

Spife-ification of a nation

[yes i know there is no spife in this picture]

Now, it's fair to say that I've eaten my fair share of Malaysian meals.
And, as I've mentioned I'm sure, I love the food here, and with your permission, I will continue eating here.

But there is one question that I keep coming back to when dining here.. and that question is:

Why do Malaysian eateries never have knives?

It's driving me spare.

I'm pretty sure that almost every meal I've eaten here has involved the options of a fork, a spoon or chopsticks... but no knife.

Now that's fine if the meal consists of small, dainty morsels, tastefully arranged, but it seems that the most often used kitchen utensil here is a cleaver.





Now a cleaver is a fairly un-subtle instrument... its main purpose is to create medium sized chunks of things, a job it does very well. If a large part of your daily job is involved creating medium sized chunks of something from an even larger chunk, then relax, I am not trying to steal your livelihood.
In the world of IT, the world of the cleaver is the backend, the server room, the kitchen, the no-nonsense nerve-centre of all thing culinary.

It is in the front-end, the end-user experience that I am proposing is the problem.

If we take these afore-mentioned medium sized chunks of things and serve them to a patron who only has a fork, spoon and chopsticks to eat it with... doesn't it seem likely that this patron may have some issue eating it? To my simple western mind, it does. Alas, I am a stranger in a strange land here.... I simply have way too much trouble trying to break apart large parts of any meal here... i end up throwing food all over the place, well, honestly, all over myself.

Now I believe that it's important for a nation to be proud of its distinctions from other nations.. a national dress, song, dish, that's fine... but human beings have been using knives since the stone age, & it's an amazingly handy tool that neither a fork, or a spoon or chopsticks (or all combined) can overcome. I'm glad that Malaysia is branching out in distinction from the surrounding nations, but please Malaysia, eradication of the knife is not the way to do this.

Please, Malaysia... welcome back the knife into your eatery arsenal. It is a handy, handy thing...

Or at least, can I suggest a widespread uptake of the spife?


A spife is a combination spoon and knife, just as a Spork is a combination spoon and fork.
A Knork, for the uninitiated, is a combination knife and fork, a Splade, of course, being a combination spoon and blade (knife)


Does anyone know a good spife, knork or splade importer?




...Is this issue something that is common to most Asian nations? Who makes a decision like this? Is it a result of fears that the general populous will erupt into a fierce melee of cutlery wielding maniacs?
Are there Government departments working feverishly into the night on such hot topics of national security?

I remember reading something the quote that mankind is only two hot meals from barbarity, but i have never heard it suggested that the barbarity might arise from those same two hot meals...

Please join me, lets begin the spife-ification of Malaysia!

Uncyclopedia is Wikipedia's idiot kid brother. Check it out.

Indoor Rollercoaster at Times Square shopping centre, Kuala Lumpur

...and just to prove that I didn't steal this photo from teh interwebs:



...here's myself and Greg posing awkwardly in front. Greg is one of our team in Sydney who has been kind enough to be sent here by our company for a week. On ya Greggles!

Strandbeest

...amazing kinetic sculptures.

Flickr introduces graphs of camera usage!

This is a great idea, and essentially turns flickr into an enormous camera review site. You can click on each camera name and view a wide selection of images that have been taken with that camera, from all over the world.

Nice one!

Fish Face

10-wheeled skateboard

Good morning... coffee in hand (with sweetened, condensed milk, of course), here's a quick update for the day.

Check out that awesome 10-wheeled skateboard that Frank and I found in a toy store in KLCC! I skateboarded for many years in my 'youf' but riding this would be a really unusual experience methinx.

I was originally going to refer to it as a 'deca-wheeled' skateboard, but i just felt like too much of a wanker, to be honest.

• Did I mention that I'm now a Team Lead? Yeh baby!

• Did I also mention that I haven't had a cigarette in hmmmm .... 12 days? Yep, true story also.

It sucked fairly heavily (oh, so punny) for the first few days there, especially in a country such as Malaysia, where smoking is quite common compared to Australia.

Smoking in restaurants (sorry, 'Restorans') is commonplace, although they often/usually have a smoking section.

Smoking in restaurants in Australia has been banned for a few years now.



Went to Sungei Wang plaza last night (I'm going to be laughed at, but that's 'river of gold' right?, oops correction: 'river of money', (thankyou Julee) not be confused with 'Sungai besi' - 'river of steel' which is a train station around here somewhere? Ok? points out of 10?)

... and bought the above other things the above ^ genuine-Asian-country drinking bottle.

I can truly fit in now. Well, fit in as much as a long-haired blonde guy can in an Asian country.

Also bought 3 groovey t-shirts for 50MYR (about 18 AU$), i think they are genuine copies though. Like that matters.




This is not Sungei Wang plaza, but Ampang Park plaza instead. I kinda like the arrangement of stair at each end.

'SEX WORDS'

Tonight I went to dinner with a good female friend to Chopstik Noodle House at Midvalley Megamall. Excellent food, excellent conversation and the most excellent-est company.

We ate duck. We ate prawn dumplings in soup. We talked with our mouths full. The waitresses filled our cups and splashed the drink on the table. We didn't care.

My friend and I, we speak openly, we speak freely, nothing is particularly taboo (though you might get slapped), but when a particular lull fell over the restaurant just as my friend uttered the phrase 'SEX WORDS'... you could have heard a pin drop.

She turned red, people turned around.

I, being a gentleman, laughed.


But honestly, what an awesome night. Thankyou whoever you are!

Today, got up at 6:30am, read the newspaper with my coffee. Took the above shot from my balcony.

Went downstairs at 9am, swam 12 laps in the (25m) pool , then 20 minutes in the sauna. back upstairs, shower, did some work, then, within 30 seconds after I hit send, Frank is on the phone asking if I'd like to go to do some archery.

Hell yes I would. I haven't shot an arrow in a long time. I used to do competition archery for a few years there, but hey that was 10 years ago.

Great fun, came back, had lunch on Jalan Alor (mmmMMMmmm duck rice) then back to my apartment in time to watch the rain come down.

It's 4:30pm, so far, it has been a great day.

I bought and watched 'A History of Violence' last weekend.

Definitely the most mature Cronenberg film I've seen, Viggo Mortensen and Maria Bello are amazing to watch together. Rare that a film depicts so much love AND so much anger and a mixture of the two.

I like David Cronenbergs' work, he crosses boundaries and tackles topics that others would not. Sometimes with varying degrees of success, but always thought provoking.

Highly recommended.

- one month in Malaysia today -

Listening to: 'Neon Golden' by the Notwist


Thanks to Julee for dropping by with kind wishes on my post about deciding to stay in Malaysia for a year. Return the favour and visit her blog here.

Aah Saturday... gotta love it. This morning i got up around 8:30 and spent the next couple of hours quietly drinking coffee, surfing the web, and watching recently downloaded episodes of 'Lost'.
I'm really poor until Wednesday, so used to Sydney budgeting, I'm thrown out of whack here.
So, in true geek form, I fired up the google spreadsheets, and now I have a basic budget with everything in both AU$ and MYR.

...Such is the exciting life of living in another country.

I called my good friend Kele last night, he gets married 2moro back in Australia. All the very best to you buddy.

I also called my sister and talked to her for the first time since coming over here. It makes it so much easier to be able to just grab your phone and call back home.

Hi Gill if you're reading this.

Had lunch with a friend at Times Square, went to the gym when i came home, ate some bananas (much cheaper than sydney), and didn't smoke any cigarettes for a change.
Cigarettes are so cheap here, 7.40 MYR, about $2.70 AU$ per pack. In Sydney I'm used to paying about $12 AU$ a pack and the cigarettes here are a bit stronger, so there's that real chance that when I go back home I'll get stuck in a really expensive nicotine spiral.
SO better to proactively try to keep it in check really.

Not really that much else to report... 2moro the plan is to go to the Butterfly Park, I know I've been saying that for a few weeks now though. I will go for a swim, and I will have fun and say hello to strangers.

All the best.

Found Him!

advertising for diet dog food...

...completely and utterly stolen from neatorama.

Okaaay... I need to backtrack a little here.
Last Tuesday and Wednesday were public holidays here (hear that all you Australians? Yeh that's right 2 days off).. celebrating, as far as I can tell either or both of Hari Raya and Deepavali.

I won't try to explain these days relevance from what I've gleaned from taxi (sorry 'Teksi') drivers and passersby, I will, instead, lean towards my friend Wikipedia:


"Hari Raya (Malay for "Day of Celebration") is a term used in Malaysia that can apply to the Muslim festivals of Eid ul-Fitr or Eid ul-Adha. Typically, simply "Hari Raya" refers to Eid ul-Fitr, which is also known as "Hari Raya Aidilfitri" or "Hari Raya Puasa" (literally "Fasting Day of Celebration").

As Eid ul-Fitr often coincides with either the Hindu festival of Deepavali or the Chinese New Year, which are both celebrated in Malaysia, portmanteaus such as DeepaRaya or Kongsi Raya have been created that refer to Eid ul-Fitr and one of the two festivals."


"Diwali, also called Deepavali, is a major Hindu festival that is also very significant in Sikhism and Hinduism. Known as the "Festival of Lights," it symbolises the victory of good over evil, and lamps are lit as a sign of celebration and hope for mankind. Celebrations focus on lights and lamps, particularly traditional diyas. Fireworks are associated with the festival in many regions.."


So there... make sense of that?

Oh Good.

In Australia, possibly the most humorous concept put to us by overseas tourists is the notion that kangaroos are everywhere, even in the main street of Sydney (hahaha, oh you crazy foreigners! oh...wait a minute.. i am one now).

Well, last week a monkey wandered into work. A bloody monkey! I like monkeys, though they freak me out a bit.




They're just big enough to be a major hassle if one jumped on you, and they look like they're seriously considering it, all the time.

When i went to the bird park, there were some monkeys sitting on top of a gate i had to walk through... i started to open it and they screeched at me a bit, and there was one that was just grinning at me. I seriously thought he was going to jump on my head.

He wore the same expression I wore when I was 20 years old, drunk and just been dared to jump off a roof or something similar.

Anyways, that's tonights post. Hope you enjoyed it.
Oh, just wanted to say a big Hi and thankyou to everyone who I've spoken to on googletalk, messenger, email, telephone who has lend me their support, and told me how much quieter the place is without me back there.

Some have even gone as far as to say they miss me, but let's be honest, that's just pillow talk really.

;)

...till next time.
Oh and visit my good friend Enclave's LiveJournal. Writing like this makes me wonder if I should really put some effort into this blog, or just give up completely.

Laters.