Video of the Week: We Can't Stop (Miley Cyrus) - Sam Tsui & Jason Pitts

Cover of Miley Cyrus' "We Can't Stop" by Sam and Jason Pitts. Actually I wanted to put her VMA performance video because it's definitely the VOTW but it's so disgusting and indecent I don't want to. :1 

Orchard Heights - Karak Homestay (Bentong)

August seems to be the most happening month for me for the past 2 years. Mainly because it's the longest semester break I will ever have in the entire year (that's only 1.5 months as compared to others who has 2-3 months for their summer break..pfft). So two weeks after Penang, my family and I, together with Hazel HF went for retreat. Our last retreat was in Kee's Farm two years ago..which I did not blog about lol.

This is the stone house. Our temporary home for two days.

This was inside the wooden house.. nice floor :D (I forgot to take picture of the exterior! Gah..).

Nice kitchen at the wooden house. Both the wooden house and the stone house are furnished with air-conditioners and all the windows and doors have mosquito netting. Yay. Unfortunately there isn't much kitchen utensils here so you might want to bring your own. And overall, the stone house was quite filthy, sorry I had to say filthy because there were a lot of lizards shits around (!!!!!) I hate lizards with all my heart. I think the house was quite vacant for quite some time. But the wooden house was more decent.

Looking at the durians we found and collected. This place is a private property but since we are staying here, we are free to roam around the place except that you don't want to trespass other people's houses..and this place really huge. 

Running to grab more durians. Super kiasu -.-

Loots

Geese.

Feasting on the durians we collected. Unfortunately, the durians didn't taste that great. But everyone had fun and enjoyed the experience of collecting durians. :D 

Preparing the fishing baits

There are several ponds around where we stayed..

... but it's freaking difficult to catch any fish. :O

Mum marinating some beef.

Beeeeefff. For barbecue.

There's a place to barbecue nearby, like just 2 minutes away from the wooden house. Open area and there were crazy lots of flies. Mainly because of the fishes.. attracted lots and lots of flies..

Yeh. You can pluck and pick anything around this place. Simple place but not much to do to be honest. Time well spent to slack around : ) By the way, beware of evil insects! Strange enough, most of us came back itchy, like some after-effects thing because we didn't feel that itchy when we were there. o_O

Food: Coffee at Mods Cafe, Melaka

Just got back from Melaka as I went there over the weekend. One of the places I went this time with the bunch was Mods Cafe.

I have this habit of taking down restaurant exterior or signage so that I can remember where were the food pictures taken. So while I attempted to take a picture of Mods Cafe, one of the workers shouted (as I was standing across the street) that no picture was allowed. Okay, I understand some people don't want their place or themselves to be photographed, I understand. So I kept my camera away and walked inside the cafe together with my friends.

I just sat down when the waitress rushed us with our order. She didn't deliberately say so but her nonverbal actions betrayed her as she kept asking us to order first. Then when we placed our first order, I heard her walking towards her colleague and told him to brew the cappuccino together with the other table's order. Lol?

By the way, I was surprised that customers were allowed to take pictures. So photography is open to customers and not the public. I see.

Cajons as chairs..interesting. Okay, so I figure not many people would know about this instrument called cajon. Or they know the instrument, just not the name. But anyway, I'm surrounded by musically-talented friends so they recognized that the chairs were actually cajons.. with snares. Excited, they started to play the cajons (just a little beats) but the barista rudely told us not to play it. Very very blunt and rude. Okay, as customers, I'm sure we are not dai sai and we know how to respect other patrons but I'm sure the tone could have been better.

Interestingly..the straws they gave us to use was awfully familiar. Coffee-lovers, I'm sure you recognize this:

I'm not a coffee drinker so I ordered an iced chocolate instead. It cost me RM14 but the taste is not up to my expectation. I would have expected more chocolate-y taste than milk. I'd rather pay RM5-6 for an iced chocolate at Old Town or RM14 for my favourite Starbucks frappuccino. 

Cappuccino. 

Mods Cafe has a minimum 1 order per person rule. Yes, it's a rule which you must follow and they insist so. We already placed 5 orders for 7 people so we asked if we could just have 5 orders but she insisted that everyone must order. The place has limited seatings so perhaps they just want to earn more from it. 

Taking a picture with the 'rule'

I can't comment on the coffee here since I'm not a coffee drinker and I didn't eat because I totally lost my appetite after we're given such a bad service for an overall experience. The people working were just hostile and unfriendly. But when we left, at least the lady that served us said thank you. 

Curious to find out if it was just a one-time bad service or perhaps the guy was having a bad mood or something, I went and google up this place. Sure enough, I am not the only who think that the service is horrible as many other people who wrote reviews on TripAdvisor shared the same sentiments with me! However, the earlier reviews were favourable though. I think about half of the recent reviews were criticizing the service, so you kinda get the idea how bad it was if half the people that left reviews were unhappy with the service.

One last thing - don't expect receipts here! They don't have and will not provide you one. Which leaves me wondering, how do they pay their taxes? They wrote our orders in a notebook (yes, I noticed that).

So final verdict, personally, I will never ever patronise this place ever again. And I will not recommend you to come to this place, lest the service gets better and people (both the public and customers) are treated with more respect. Come here if you like nice and fancy decos, and if service doesn't affect your mood. As for the coffee? Try it for yourself. Some say it's nice some say it's just okay.

Food: Pei Pa Duck - Restoran Chu Yoke Weng at Kedai Kopi Bee San, Air Itam

One of the most worthy things to hunt down in Penang is Restoran Chu Yoke Weng's Pei Pa duck (or Pi Pa in mandarin). It's quite funny how this small stall is called "restoran" :P

Originally, our primary motivation to come here was to try out the ochien that was recommended by Bangsarbabe at here too. Unfortunately for us, we found out from Chu Yoke Weng that the ochien stall has closed down for quite a number of years already. Okay, we were left speechless. Lol. The uncle also told us that it was not because the ochien was not nice so it ran out of business but apparently it was some family problem (father don't allow the son to continue the business or something). Oh...

Anyway, when we were there at Kedai Kopi Bee San, it was rather deserted. Only another 1-2 families were seated down to eat the Pei Pa duck. 

For RM20 (half a duck), this Pei Pa duck was worth it. Although we tapau back, the skin was still crispy! We also find that the sauce a bit too salty so we prefer to eat it on its own without the sauce, can savor the duck flavour too. Good stuff indeed! One of the best ducks I've eaten. Teehee. 

Food: Cakes at Alexis Bangsar (Telawi)

Just went to Alexis at Bangsar (Telawi) a few days ago to eat cakes after lunch with Aki, HF and Shanon. The last time I had Alexis cakes..it looked like this..

Superrrr evil, I know right.

Mixed Berries Meringue #1

Mixed Berries Meringue #2

Mixed Berries Meringue.. is really a Pavlova. The sides melts in your mouth! Fresh berries and it's not too sweet. Awesome texture. This is one of the best cakes from Alexis.

Tiramisu #1

Tiramisu #2

One of Alexis' signature cake. Topped with various nuts dipped with caramel. I love nuts but this is too sweet for my liking! :O If you like Garrett's popcorns, you're gonna love this too.. But the cake's really good. 

Black Forest #1

Black Forest #2

For RM13 per slice, this is one of the best deals you can get from Alexis because the portion is huge! As you can see, the cake cannot even 'stand' because it is just huge. Generous amounts of cherries and the taste of wine (rum?) is really obvious.

Now, drool please.

Video of the Week: Katy Perry - Roar (Cover by Jona Selle)

Poh Ling shared with me a video by Jona Selle, automatically subscribed. Lol. He's German =)

Ace

After about one month bumming around, playing online poker, rewatching my favourite series and going out.. reality is drawing closer as results were out this morning. Of course, I was dying in curiosity for the past few days because I wanted to know how did I do in my exams. For the past few semesters, I had high carrying marks but the end result wasn't up to what I hoped for because obviously, I did quite badly in the final examination. Woe is to me.

So anyway, after refreshing the uni site for countless of times this morning.. I'm glad to say I'm so happy with my results; even more thankful to God for the best result I would have ever gotten in uni so far. The best part is that this is a really good result to begin my Year 2. Bam bam bam! :D Couldn't be more delighted than this.

Although I would say in terms of contest-excitement, it has been pretty low this year because I have not been actively joining contest like I would a year or two ago mainly because I feel tired with uni and life, I got no motivation to put in effort and join contests. However, the focus given to uni has not been wasted, I guess, seeing that indeed sometimes we need to sacrifice one thing to get another. But all is well.

I honestly cannot wait till I finish studying though I have a plan in mind on what to do after finishing this degree. But what is ahead of me, I am not sure.. but I shall wait.

Next up.. I'm really excited about the upcoming YPF camp! It's been 4 years since the last.. it was also because of the first YPF camp I attended that made me started this blog..

Food: Hawker food at Kedai Makanan Hong Kong Tea Garden, Penang

This is one of the random place we crashed in the attempt to find ochien (fried oyster omelette) because we were hunting for the famous ochien in Penang but both were closed down or sold out. Pfft...

Lotsa food can be found here.

Mi hun with fried fish fillet. The mi hun was surprisingly good although it looked so simple lol. 

What I know as 'har mee' in KL is Penang's Hokkien mee. Nothing bombastic. 

Penang's chee cheong fun (rice noodle roll) comes with chilli, sweet sauce and also the signature hae ko (shrimp paste). So far the usual cheee cheong fun in KL does not come with hae ko. Hae ko is commonly found in the Malaysian Chinese fruit rojak.

This..I did not touch. Lol. Duck soup mixed with random parts of duck I guess.

The hunt for ochien was successful here. Yum yum. This plate of ochien has small oysters (some serve large ones) but the serving is generous. But I find that the omelette is a bit little, maybe should add an egg or two.

This small serving of char koay teow cost RM3.50! Commercialized price. Lol. Anyway, I just had a random thought. Someone should do a char koay teow challenge in Penang. Try all the char koay teow that is available in Penang. :x 

Ikan bakar! Quite pricey but it's tasty.