Brien’s Bites…

Yes, we are still sticking to our ‘healthy diet’ practice at the office; but the culprit this time is our boss! She just bought us deep-fried bananas, yam, and cempedak! How can we not succumb to the crispy yet tender aromatic experience of the fried banana, or the chewy and tender fragrance of the cempedak? I’m really enjoying this week at work!

Image: In “conjunction” with the “Healthy Week” at my working place, an old friend Yusry who used to work at my office took my friend, Rodziah (who also works at the same company but a different department) and me out to Outback Restaurant yesterday for lunch. We had plump juicy fried mushrooms and gourmet burgers with a substantially sized side of fries! I had asked for pepper, ketchup, Tabasco sauce and HP Sauce for my meal. Rodziah was saying that if I were at a French Restaurant, I would have made the chef really, really upset! My burger was good! Thanks Yusry! The camera somehow refused to fire the flash! 23 June 2007.

What was amusingly ironical to me was that they could have easily picked up the ones under “Asian/ Oriental Concepts/Designs”. They don’t look like the ones trying to look for possible ways to interior decorate an igloo or a dung-hut! Well, I guess some people just don’t get it.

After that, I headed to the other side of the mall for my dinner. I passed by this snack store that had a banner advertising their latest offering of some iced dessert called, “Iced Kimo”. Can you imagine if I told someone to get some Kimo (that sounds more like “Chemo”) for dessert?

It was an exceptionally warm and humid Sunday yesterday. I had wanted to go look for some lights for my new house (to also get some free air-conditioning despite the horrendous weekend crowd. I was willing to chance it since my parents are in Bangkok and I get to use the car!) until a “Heroes” marathon came on (cable) television! I found myself glued to the idiot box for almost 4 hours trying to catch up on what happened since I last watched an episode of it god knows how many weeks ago! I bet I would not miss anything if I skip another 4 to 5 weeks since things on that show are not going as fast as I would want it to. It is starting to drag (like ‘Lost’ having really lost it!) and reminds me of those American daytime soaps where you see a character happily announcing to her family of her pregnancy. Five years later, that character would still be in THAT pregnancy!

It has been a while since I went to the gym on weekends. Farouk (my work colleague, friend and gym buddy) and I decided to do a session on Saturday evening since we couldn’t make it on Friday. I have forgotten how positively spacious and empty the gym felt on weekends sans the crowd! I get to use all the machines without having to wait and how some pigs hog on the machines on weekdays! They would give you effeminate dagger-stares when you ask them how much more time they need on the machines.

Our instructor was surprised that we turned up at the gym on a weekend. We took that opportunity to tell him that we needed a moratorium on his services for a month or so since we are doing quite okay with our regime. Initially, we were a bit worried on how he would take it (our instructor) since he had been encouraging us to sign up for the next 10 sessions, but it turned out to be more positive than we would have thought initially.

Homer was returned to the mall yesterday after the local newspapers ran a report on it. The guys must be worried after the surveillance cameras of the mall caught their images, though unclear (but in these cases, would eventually found out after a through investigation). These two guys are on bail now and one of them is a son of a prominent lawyer!

“Sometimes, we make the right decisions.

                                                                            Anonymous

It’s ironical how when I was in my late twenties, I was into the new-age way of life (meditations, aromatherapy, crystals etc), some of my friends would mock me! Whenever they thought about me, they would automatically hum the ‘Twilight Zone” theme!

The philosophy is: don’t ridicule another person’s interests or hobbies no matter how unusual it may seem to you. You may end up in it yourself without even knowing. Who knows, someday people may discover the ability to switch sex (yes, gender!) at a thought. On some days, they look like Arnold Swazeneggar and the next they look like “the artist that used to be known as Prince” (Okay, okay, Paris Hilton then)!

Or you know someone in this day and age that has the ability to do that, what do you do? Mock him? Remember, “ Sins of the fathers are visited on the generations…”

I remember my dad used to make a mockery of the size of his mother-in-law’s nostrils. Now, his daughter-in-law has them so prominent that on a clear day, you can see forever!

Last Saturday, I attended a full day seminar titled, “Helping the Depressed”. No, I didn’t came out feeling more depressed if that is what some of you might want to hear from me. Instead, I came out suicidal!

My order of Chicken Tacos came with three soft-shell tacos heavily stuffed with meat, bell peppers and onions, with a side of black beans and wild rice. I also ordered guacamole to go with my tacos and boy, did I regret my gluttony! I had to abandon the rice but I cleaned out the black beans and guacamole! By the time PC and I walked out of the restaurant, I was so stuffed that I felt like I was going to explode if anyone accidentally or playfully press his or her forefinger onto my stomach! The result would be the staff having to work extra beyond their job scope while I would just lie on the floor and wait for the mall’s animal shaped kiddie-train to run me over!

As we sat on one of the couches at the mall, observing people, we realized that in general, Malaysian men are total slobs in terms of their dressing! We were not talking about the metrosexuals, or the homosexuals (who are generally great dressers if not a tad too flamboyant sometimes but that’s fine. At least they make the effort).

PC called it an aesthetic disappointment! They are far from being neat and would generally wear polo shirts that looked like they were collected from a cabbage patch and shorts that looked like it was from the Yap Ah Loy era. The worst is that they also don’t even bother to wear proper casual shoes or appropriate sandals, but those “buy three pairs and get an additional pair free for RM10” flip-flops! This was the mall, for god’s sake!

I believe that if you give your appearance a little more effort, despite the measurements of the abdominal circumferences, it will show! And with regular exercise and a healthier lifestyle, you would naturally feel better and even if you don’t know what self-confidence is all about, one would eventually feel it grow. You will find people treating you better and vice versa (and even our service industry here sucks big time)!

I have been to a wedding where the father of the bride was wearing a simple short-sleeved white shirt while it was a black tie function. If you may say it was not such a big deal, why then is everyone who (Ahem!) attended the wedding dinner is still talking about it after two years? Okay, if you are attending this dinner at a remote village where they serve stewed dog-meat, then I would understand, but then nowadays with the exposure of the media, I can imagine some of the guests wearing faux designer labels (which is still fine since they are making the effort, but not something out of a GQ magazine - circa 1981 edition)!

I don’t think clothes should define a man and being a slob in their own homes is nobody’s business! That is,  until they go out. There would be a reason why in general you are not being able to get the respect that you need! Respect is earned, not demanded and neat, effort or common sense dressing is one of it.

Even more Ah Bengs are dressing better nowadays! At least most of their accessories don’t make any more noises when they walk.

My boss, two colleagues and I took a day off work and headed down to Kuala Selangor for a 1-day photography trip. We started out at about 10-plus a.m. and reached there shortly before 12 noon. We stopped by some of the palm estates to take some photographs during our journey and alas, my Canon G3 REFUSED to work! My once trusty camera that had won me a prize once had finally gone dead on me at no better time! Luckily I also brought along my Canon IXUS 40 but I enjoy taking photographs with my wide-angle lens that I use with my G3. Can’t do that with my IXUS. Anyway, that was better than nothing!

We headed to the fishing community and started snapping photographs as if our lives depended on it. The sun was good but not the humidity! The river (that leads to the nearby ocean) wasn’t exactly clean and in fact, murky and smelled!

Anyway, a lot of people from KL and PJ would travel up to this place to stock up their refrigerators with fresh supplies of fish on weekends! Used to be a lot cheaper but not anymore. I also saw some small shanty houses belonging to fishermen with cars like new Mercedes Benz and higher-end Japanese branded cars parked in their (some) makeshifts garages.

My boss Bee bought us lunch at a Muslim coffee shop and to my surprise; their version of Thai Seafood Tom Yam was surprisingly good! Our rice and dishes were nothing special though.

Our photo-expedition later took us to Bukit Melawati. No doubt it is a tourist spot but the place is unique and charming with the exception of mosquitoes! I was the one bitten most out of the four of us!

On our way out of Kuala Selangor, we spotted a cendol store and ended up having a bowl each. The girls had them with fermented sticky rice (tapai) while the guy had just the regular sticky rice. A nice, delicious ‘dessert’ to round up a pleasant trip!

Images:

5) Taken at Bukit Melawati. L to R: Ina, Zailan and Bee (our boss). Photo courtesy of Zailan (http://zailan.fotopages.com/). 12 June 2007

6) Concentrating on a shot at Bukit Melawati. Picture courtesy of Zailan. 12 June 2007.