A prolonged dinner

Thursday night is the day to unwind. For some of us, the weekend starts earlier. For an unexplain reason, the place we chose to have dinner had more humans in it than usual. Kudos to the owner for this but bad news for us hungry people I'm afraid. Its a quiet place with easy parking. ( Bonus points scored threefold ..as I HATE squishing the poor car into some weeny nook and hoping for the best. )

It started off ( as most dinners do ) with a great deal of anticipation. Good food, good company, a dollop of alcohol thrown in. As atmosphere goes, it was good. Dim lights hiding a multitude of crowsfeet and comfy chairs just the right height so I can have my feet touching the ground instead of dangling dangerously the entire evening.

We ordered tapas of various types...pate ...and for the main course..I opted for aglio olio ( creature of habit ). The tapas certainly took its time coming. We saw them arriving at a stately tempo....ie adante like. I eyed the tables around me suspiciously, had our tapas made its way to their table instead? No....afraid not.

As time dragged on, with no sight of the main course let alone those elusive tapas, conversation drew to a halt as we collectively wished the chef gangrenous toes and other dangly bits for making us wait this long. Just as I was about to pooh the spell out loud....fairy foorsteps proved that prayers do get answered sometimes. FOOD...finally. A hungry man is an angry man...or at the least a crabby man. As the warmth of the wine and food enveloped me, I decidedly became more chatty and I suspect so did the rest at the table.

Just as we thought our bad spell had ended, we were once again proven wrong. Coffee and profiterols....it took another hour before we saw them both. I arrived home a little past midnight. A prolonged dinner INDEED.

Explain this please..

Okay, fess up who 's the idiot who concocted this mess and had the audacity to make us PAY for this meal?

I name it angel-hair-goo. What would you call it? 

Tested and selected

Taugeh with salted fish. If done properly, the crunchiness of the taugeh ( chomp chomp chomp) laced with the salty slightly chewy salted fish....teamed with fluffy rice makes for a great meal. Usually, you see the sorriest looking taugeh...drowned in oil...with no sign of the salted fish. Ewwweee. There must be a rule....canteen folks should be forced to eat the stuff they dish out for us. Honest! 

Have you ever...

Have you ever seen such a huge menu? 

The obligatory tea-break

Folks assume us government servants hold fast to our teabreak regardless. There is some truth in that statement. You see us being depicted in cartoons as those lazy buggers who drink tea just before work, then take another break around 10:30am...followed by a prolonged lunch. We start work at half two...( 30 minutes later ) then we have yet another tea break around 4:00pm and sit around until 5pm before we punch our cards. In between the breaks, some of us would be away from the desk....because of course we don't all have tea breaks at exactly the same time.

In defence ....we're all not lazy sods in the civil service. Some of us actually work:) 

Bold and Beautiful

BB is nice. Here's a run down of who's who. ( As I remember )
Stephanie is married to Eric forrestor. ( The forrestors are this mega rich family...designing couture clothes )They were divorced for a while. During which time..Eric was married?? or had a relationship with Brooke.Brooke is his ex-daughter-in-law....whom which he had a son Rick. Rick's all grown up....Brooke eventually remarried Ridge ( Eric's son with stephanie...we later find..this isn't true.) Ridge is stephanie's son with Massimo.

Now do you understand the addiction????

Nine impossible things before breakfast?

I have difficulty getting up in the mornings. The snooze feature means I get to hit it as many times as I want before peeling my eyes open. Which also means by the time I crawl out of bed, I'm left with roughly ten minutes to shower..decide on what to wear...microwave a mug of coffee...and make myself a sandwich, stuff the sandwich into mouth...gulp the coffee in stages.....timing it so as not to scald the tongue.....and then there's the drive to work....the hurried walk from carpark to main building. It's busy most mornings...and that's before 8am. Dang!!

What I'm reading

On the pretext of looking for a magazine, I found myself lured to TIME bookstore just after lunch time. By some trick of fate, I'd left having lunch until way after the designated time. With a rumble in the tummy, my senses were heightened. I found this book .....whilst looking for Rebecca Shaw's book. The cover ( not the one pictured in this entry ) was enticing. At a glance it looked like a horror story...but reading the back of the book....the story sounded interesting. Black humour it said. Just up my street. I paid....along with three other obligatory mags..and made my way down to have a late-lunch. ( Trunch= lunch and tea)

Hello hello

My father adores taking pictures. And into his family was born two kids who absolutely hate having their pictures taken. What did he do to deserve this you may well ask yourself... probably something really really bad. The wife obliges when able. But as she's bogged down with chores ( something she likes to highlight when asked to pose for a picture please ) she is excused ( albeit reluctantly ) most of the time. During one of the weekends back home...I woke up one morning..to be greeted with Weber the duck perched precariously on top of my container of crackers. Either Weber came to life the night before and wanted to chomp its way through my crackers...( having heard me rave about them earlier in the day ) or somebody wanted someone to pose.

Pssst, I suspect my father had something to do with the duck posing like this.

The Motor show

Women as a general rule do not have the ability to get excited about cars. There are of course ( as in everything in life) exceptions to this rule. I was persuaded to go to the motor show ( a yearly affair ) held at the putra world trade centre last Sunday. There were a lot of people....slightly more male preponderence....the few women I saw had fake smiles plastered on their faces. And those with real smiles...were obviously the ones in the early phase of the relationship...where everything appears rosy...even the idea of spending an entire sunday afternoon being nudged, pushed and bumped whilst feasting eyes on cars you can only hope to own one day. There were young families about as well. Women with pushprams...and young dad's dragging their reluctant young uns.....

And of course....there had to be the right collection of people..young....boisterous....and loud...who thoroughly enjoyed the experience. They were the ones clicking away with their cameras...and oogling at the scantily clad women drapped across half the cars on display. I'm never much use around huge crowds of people....no matter which direction you go...people would insist on going the opposite direction...nudging you either into a complete standstill...or forcing you to deviate from your original trajectory. Eeeeekk... 

When was the last time you were here?

What does the MALL have to offer? Cold storage, McDonalds, KFC,Auntie Anne's,Chicken Hut, Sushi something restaurant..( I forget the name).....Starbucks. Secret Recipe..and a second hand bookstore. It offers quite a bit really. The frequent visits to this establishment has nearly always been fulfiling.

It was fashionable to be seen at the Mall in the 1980s. Now, people prefer going to KLCC and Midvalley megamall. Are we snobs? Or does peer pressure dictate where we shop? 

Fish cutlets

These are pretty damm good cutlets. It has just a suggestion of crispiness on the outside and when you bite into it, the soft potato melts in your mouth with just the right suggestion of fish lingering on after you swallow. Eaten on its own ...you need a glass of icy cold water and a gossipy mag. I want two of them now...and a glass of red wine would be nice too please. 

L'Occitane

This picture was taken in Midvalley. Here's a theory, hands up those of you who develop a headache if you spent more than an hour there. I can mentally see at least three hands waving vigorously in the air. Mine and two other friends. We've come to the conclusion that its the sheer size of the place, the throngs of people we have to wade through to get to where we want and that the ceiling is just that bit lower than what we deem a comfortable height.

Today, almost every other family in the klang valley brought their young family to KLCC. And so I developed a suggestion of a headache whilst window-shopping. Plan fell through, after a quick lunch, I edged my way towards kinokuniya to pick up a book. ( Nil in stock...grrrr ) I ended up buying two mags. A poor consolation indeed.

The negative thing re school holidays is...KIDS just about everywhere. And snotty-nose ones especially gravitate towards me. The big plus point...is there are infinitely less cars on the road. Making my journey to work very enjoyable. And for that...I forgive the snotty hand which came in contact with my sleeve earlier this afternoon. Happy holidays kiddo. 

Reading is a joy

 

Delightful reading

This book was recommended by a friend. She said.." it's a food critic kind of book you'ld like it". She was right. I more than like this book. It's refreshingly different from the likes of " a year in provence" . Reichl adds a recipe in between her writing as an interlude presumably and she ends with her piece on the restaurant and along with it the number of stars awarded. Very nice. I bought this book last week and already I've googled Reichl just to see how may other books she's written. If that isn't a sign I like this book....I'm not sure what else qualifies. Please buy....read it....