Random Weekend Updates

Have been unwell for the past week due to a darn persistent sorethroat. Some shuffled pics to decipher the activities of 10-12Jul and 18-19 Jul.



Let's see, this is what we did:
Went for Museum Fest at National Museum (pink tanks).. The activities were opposite the museum, at the open air SMU grounds. But it rained, so we left quite early.

Bought Pistachio and Sakura Macarons (thanks to Bakerzin promo) to go with Starbucks frappe.

Tried Pacific Coffee's Oreo Ice Blended Coffee, some berry fruit ice blended, and raspberry dome (white chocolate cake with raspberry center and a crunchy base).

Set lunch at Billy Bombers - hot dog with cheese and onions toppings, and fries .

Watching Terminator Salvation movie with gourmet popcorn at Cathay.. Chose Sour Cream and Chives flavour.. too salty..

Chilling out at the numerous settees available at Orchard Central. Nice and comfy to sit on.

"Tanning" my new Totally Damier Azur MM

Adventures in Kuala Lumpur

This is a year of revisiting places I have been to. First it was Hong Kong, now its KL (last trip to KL in Feb 2007).
Enticed by Tiger Airway’s $25 per pax one way ticket including taxes to KL, I booked tics to go and check out the Malaysia Mega Sale. Was unable to secure cheap tickets for the flight back, so the intention was to fly there and take coach back.

A series of unfortunate events occurred before we even boarded the flight. First, my Tiger Airway flight was delayed from 1525hrs to 1600hrs. In the end we were delayed more than an hour in reaching KL. The second mishap occurred upon reaching KL airport. Thought we would land at KLIA airport, then we can take the express train to city centre (30mins journey). Turned out that we landed at KLIA (LCCT) airport – the Low Cost Carrier Terminal. It was 20km away from KLIA main airport and there was no express train, only ‘express bus’ to city centre. Journey time – 60mins. Adding up the multiple delays, I reached KL City Centre at 8pm and wasted a day. We grabbed drinks and supplies from the supermkt at KLCC and finally checked-in our hotel (Impiana KLCC) at 930pm.



Was evening by the time we left the airport


Upon identification, the duty manager gave me a grave look. (Oh dear, did I do something wrong?). Turned out that they had been trying to reach me (I did not pick up the calls to save phone bill). The hotel was overbooked, so they had booked me for a different hotel for the night. We agreed to the arrangement and ended up at Pacific Regency Hotel. Think this is an all-suite hotel. The hotel was very near to KL Towers, and they had fantastic poolside bar and rooftop chillout pub. As hotel guests, we were waived cover charge and got to look around for free. Other than that, the hotel location was not very convenient.



Our hotel suite at Pacific Regency Hotel



Checking out the rooftop bar at Pacific Regency Hotel and the surrounding


Things got back to normal after we checked back into Impiana KLCC hotel the next day. Shopped around KLCC and Pavilion – nothing much. All the big brand names, not much discount. The biggest accomplishment was getting a new pair of jeans and new spectacles for hubby. Have been nagging my hubby for ages to update his jeans and his specs..so we finally got them replaced. Unfortunately, the specs took up a chunk of our budget. In the end, I only bought a couple of stuff.


Impiana Hotel - Love their freshly made and crisp waffles served at breakfast


Shop shop - eat eat


The Outback experience (The RM46.95 ribeye steak was so-so only). Cheap dining though. Our appetizer of buffalo wings was free (I had a promo coupon from some magazine), the draft Tiger Beer was only RM8.95 (Happy hour price). Total bill = RM65


What we bought - Padini Jeans (RM100), Forever 21 dress (RM67), MNG skirt (RM59), Specs (RM685) and a pendant (RM15). The Rayban bag (Never Hide) was a free gift.


Coming back, we chose Aeroline Coach as it brings us back to harbourfront instead of lavender. Comfortable spacious seats, meals and drinks provided, good service, but no individual screens for watching movies. No choice of movies.. and had to watch AVP part2 on the big plasma screen in front. Eww.. that show is awfully gross totally gruesome………. Again the coach was delayed – before departure, a passenger’s ‘normal’ temperature was too high (37.8 deg C), so had to wait for him to cool down and measure again. At the customs, we were delayed again as the family of African passengers took a while to clear immigration. Instead of reaching Hbfront at 8pm, we reached at 845pm.



The aeroline coach stopped at a nice airy and clean pitstop. They also provided a meal which I din eat.

Hmm.. plane vs coach – I am still undecided which is the better option. I think the fly there-coach back way is a good combi. Why not fly back as well? Cos the trip fm city to LCCT airport is not so convenient (take express bus) and we will need more time for that. The LCCT is really a budget terminal with no aircon – hot and crowded.

So-so Superdog

Lured by the attractive discounts on the coupons they were giving out, hubby and I shared a superdog meal. One chilidog (beef hotdog with chili topping) + fries + ice lemon tea = $5.90 (usual price $8.20)

The chilidog looked like this in the promo coupon





This was the actual thing they serve. The topping on the hotdog turned out quite pathetic. The fries were the winner - thick cut , yet crisp.

Spicy Steamboat at home

Jess gave me a packet of spicy sauce for steamboat that she bought from China. Used it yesterday. Quite nice, very salty though. I added pork ribs and stuff to boil the soup with the sauce first, then removed the thick layer of chilli oil so that it is not so spicy.


A simple and small steamboat for 3 pax



After dinner, we webcam with my bro. My nephew can walk more steadily now. He walks really fast. In a flash, he disappeared from our view, until my bro adjusts the cam. He kept walking around everywhere.. I stretched out my hands to carry him and he really came over... aww... cant carry him :((

Perplexing Issues

Bottega

On my recent trip to Hong Kong with Gek, we took budget airline Jetstar. After landing in Hkg, we had to get off the plane and take a shuttle bus into the airport terminal. While on the shuttle bus, we saw a well-groomed lady with a roomy (not small) LV bag on one hand and on the other hand, a bigger (travel-size) bag that looked like Bottega Veneta. We debated if the BV was real (the LV is definitely real). We were not familiar with BV bag designs, but the style / materials / make of it looked quite like the real thing, or at least A grade counterfeit. IN the end, we concluded it must be a fake, otherwise, we reasoned, she wouldn’t have placed a $4,000? bag on the floor of the dirty bus…

Fast forward 3 weeks later, back from my trip, I passed by BV boutique at Paragon Shopping Centre. Lo and behold .. the same bag was on display! Gosh, the lady placed her $4k-$5k BV on the floor and with $7k worth of bags on her, she was flying budget….

When I told Gek about this, she said “save on travel splurge on shopping lor”


Bottega Veneta Small Intrecciato Duffle - 3350USD
(The bag that was placed on the floor)



Small digression - this colour is very nice as well




---------------------
Food


Think I have a new neighbor who is a good cook and who takes dinner at 10pm.. For the past few nights, around 10pm, I will smell food… first night it happened, my ‘dog nose’ told me there is a good pot of chinese soup brewing… . Another day I thought I smell Kaya Toast – buttery and crisp. Another day it was some delicious-smelling dish, but undecipherable. Though there’s a coffeeshop just beside my block and I can smell the zi char every day, this is different. It does not have the wok-fried / oily smell of zi char. It smells of homecook good food… argh... such delicious free smells, but so torturing to smell and not be able to taste.



---------------------
Video

Am embarking on one of my major projects at work - the Corporate Video Production. It’s a major headache job as well because of the logistics involved and having to be middleman between the vendor and mgt. I think of myself as the ‘Producer’ while the vendor does the script writing, filming & directing and editing parts. This round, I was given a bigger headache - produce the video in HD Format… suddenly I had to concern myself with technicalities when drafting the proposal for tender. I had to ensure compatibility and best value for money (ie, the technical aspects must not take up a huge chunk of the production budget resulting in a low quality (cheapskate) production with high quality definition for viewing). This must be the ultimate nightmare. Like watching a lousy movie that is filmed in high definition and the details are sharp and clear..

Every so often, I had to bug my technical frens. Thankfully I have more than one technical expert friend to share the load.
Is HD format compatible to non-HD players? What is the difference? Is the difference obvious to layman?
Then a colleague recommended Blu-ray as the latest technology.. things got more complicated.
Must I specify Blu-ray discs since I am having HD format? Are blu-ray discs much more expensive than normal DVDs? Are blu-ray discs playable on normal DVD players?
We also had the idea of putting the final video online. Convert the video to wmv file.
Why wmv and not the rest, eg Quicktime?
Then I was told that for online video postings, we should use macromedia flash format (convertible fm wmv).
From video to WMV to macromedia. Is it difficult to render the file to flash? How about converting directly from video footage to macromedia? Or should be it DVD to flash? Will it eat up our budget? Which method will give us the best resolution for the final flash file?
Arrgghh… I feel like I have Martians talking in my brain – alien concepts that are too much for me to grasp.

p/s - the video technicalities have come back to haunt me. After calling for tender, and getting quotations from vendors, I discovered some vendors 'play cheat' by giving us HDV format. HD vs HDV? Here's a sample of info I got (makes me want to tune out before i finish reading).

"A simple way to look at it. HDV is a subset of HD, just as DV is a subset SD. HDV is a tape format and a compression scheme for storing HD video on miniDV and DVHS."


"The term HDV is a combination of “HD” and the very popular “DV” format we’ve all been using for about ten years now. HDV is a very clever way of getting HD on DV tape. It’s done by using MPEG2 compression which is the same compression used for DVDs. MPEG2 is a much more complex codec than DV and this adds to the computer requirements."

argh! Somebody kill me...