My Very First Blog

I seldom eat at Gobo Chit Chat Restaurant in Traders Hotel KL. But on that Sun afternoon in January, I was at the KL Convention Centre with my friends to attend Lillian Too's Fengshui Extravaganza 2011.

We decided to have out lunch break at Gobo Chit Chat which was just a short distance away from Plenary Hall where we had our seminar.

We started off with a complimentary appetizer of bread and butter. I always like to eat these bread before the main meal!



I had nasi goreng kampung. It was quite delicious with the egg, keropok, chicken meat, satay, and acar.



My friend ate the nasi lemak. She said it was not bad!



Another friend tried the Singapore mee hoon. It was pretty good, according to her.



Located on the 5th floor of Traders Hotel, Gobo Chit Chat also serves buffet for lunch and dinner, but we decided not to go for the buffet as we only had one hour for lunch. So ala-carte it was. The price was pretty pricey but that's to be expected eating at a restaurant in a hotel.

Lillian Too and her entourage also had lunch at Gobo Chit Chat so we actually waited for her to leave before we left our table. Well, the seminar could not possibly resume without her right? LOL!

Two weeks later on another Sunday in January, after my return from my trip in Manila, Philippines, my friends and I attended Joey Yap's Feng Shui & Astrology Seminar at the same venue.

Needless to say, we had our lunch at the same restaurant. It was the most convenient place (not too far away) and not over crowded (as it was quite pricey).

I decided to have the Singapore mee hoon this time as I was not very hungry after that morning breakfast of lum mee and roti babi at Yut Kee Restaurant.

My friend decided on naan with red tandoori chicken meat.



I tried a bit and it was pretty good especially when dipped into the sauces.

My other friend decided to try the char koay teow but found it too oily.



Perhaps I should drop by this restaurant again for the buffet if I attend any seminars at KL Convention in future. Or a buffet dinner would be good as after dinner, I could go up to the 33rd floor of Traders Hotel and chill out at SkyBar!

Now that's food for thought. Anyone want to join me?

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OK, confession time. I did not know the meaning of this word INSIDIOUS.

A check with Merriam-Webster site revealed the following definitions:
1. awaiting a chance to entrap (treacherous)
2. harmful but enticing (seductive)
3. having a gradual and cumulative effect (subtle)

If you didn't already know, INSIDIOUS is the title of a new horror movie playing in cinemas right now. As a horror movie fan, I heard some good reviews about this movie and decided to catch it yesterday.

Before you proceed, take note - SPOILERS AHEAD!

But first, you might want to watch this trailer from the movie.



Frankly speaking, I was not at all impressed with the trailer. It didn't look that scary to me, but on learning that INSIDIOUS is a collaboration between Saw co-creators James Wan & Leigh Wannell and the Paranormal Activity team comprising Oren Peli, Jason Blum and Steven Schneider, I decided to give it a go.


Director James Wan on the set of Insidious

I did not expect it to be scarier than The Exorcist - still the scariest horror movie to me - and it wasn't. Well, I was hoping it would be scarier than The Eye, my No.1 horror movie from Hong Kong directed by the Pang Brothers, but it still wasn't.

You know how it's like after I watched The Eye? Right after I stepped out of the cinema, I started to imagine things whether I was in the lift, in my room alone or in the bathroom! The Eye really freaked me out for weeks! Now that's what I call a real horror movie!!



In fact, I even find The Ring (the original Japanese horror movie), Shutter (the original Thai horror movie) and The Exorcism Of Emily Rose much scarier than Insidious.

The Ring was horribly disturbing, especially with that video thingy; Shutter gave me the goose bumps especially with the nightmarish shocking ending and Emily Rose made me worry about waking up at 3am every night!



Insidious? Let's just say I was not at all traumatized leaving the cinema hall. Haha! Perhaps I watched too many horror movies and it's getting harder to scare me? Maybe.

But that does not mean Insidious is not a good movie. It was simply not scary enough for me, but it was engrossing enough to keep me at the edge of my seat, at least for the first half of the movie. Yes, it was more suspenseful than it was scary, at least to me.



Briefly, the movie is about a couple Josh and Renai Lambert (played by Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne respectively) whom upon moving into their new home with their three kids discovers that their house is haunted and that their son Dalton has inexplicably fallen into a coma. In order to escape the haunting and save their son, they move again only to discover a shocking truth - it is not their house that was haunted, but their son!



Now that revelation may be shocking for the couple but definitely not to us viewers. That's because the filmmakers had already revealed that the boy is the source of the hauntings in the trailer! I thought this sort of hurt the movie a bit since I would have preferred to discover it myself during the movie! Oh well, maybe they needed a twist since not many would want to watch another movie about some haunted house!

Anyway, to cut the story short, Dalton is found to be gifted at astral travel in his sleep. Don't know what astral travel is?


Image courtesy of mattstone.blogs.com

Astral travel or astral projection is an out-of-body experience where the person who practises it is able to project his "astral self" or consciousness out of his physical body and travel in the astral plane. It appears that some people are more gifted in this than others but experts in astral travel claimed that everyone can do it if one practises enough.

In fact, some experts said that all of us travel out of our body in our sleep every night! Read more HERE.


Image courtesy of Mind Petals

Since astral travel seems like a foreign topic to most people, many are afraid of trying it out of fear that they may not be able to return to their physical body. Some people are also afraid that evil spirits will possess their physical body while they are away on astral travel.

And this is exactly what this movie Insidious is trying to exploit. That fear that you cannot return to your physical body and forever trapped in the astral world while an evil spirit takes over. Creepy.


Image courtesy of Wisdom Quarterly

Experts on astral travel had however, debunked such thoughts as myths. Some maintained that you are connected to your physical body by a silver cord and this cord cannot be severed under any circumstances unless you are to leave your body forever like in the case of death. Others said that actually it is only your consciousness that is traveling, your soul is still in your physical body. But with no concrete proof of this, would you believe in the experts?

The bottomline is, are you daring enough to try astral travel? If yes, here is a step-by-step guide on how you can travel out of your body. Do it at your own risk yes? : )



Back to the movie, Dalton is highly gifted in astral projection and because he had traveled a bit too far into the dark realm called "The Further", he could not find his way back. His physical body lapses into a coma and this attracts all those spirits who are craving to possess his body.

That certainly explains all the hauntings that the couple experienced, but that's not their only problem. It seems that in the dark realm, there is a demon who is hell-bent to possess their son's body and will stop at nothing to achieve it.



And from then onwards, the movie started to remind me of Steven Spielberg's Poltergeist with the arrival of the three ghost hunters with their gadgets and mumbo jumbos. It all still remain quite engrossing and entertaining until the descend into the dark realm.

I was really quite put off with all those dead souls, like the bunch of dead family members in the living room, the laughing child that runs across the hallway, and the demon himself. It was not even scary anymore! Oh by the way, did anyone notice that the demon looks like Darth Maul from Star Wars? Or is it just me?



And to see Dalton with his legs chained to the floor presumably by the demon? I mean, seriously? This just makes it look like a scene taken out from Charmed or Supernatural! Gosh!

So yes, the movie started off really well and managed to build up its suspense and momentum effectively. There were many creepy moments like the raspy whispers on the baby monitor and the front door of the house found wide open in the middle of the night. And of course the sudden appearance of the demon behind Josh almost threw me off my seat!

The actors all did a great job and this include excellent performances from Barbara Hershey as Josh's mom and Lin Shaye as the ghostbuster.



Unfortunately, it started to go downhill from the moment Josh crossed over to the other side towards the later part of the movie. Maybe they showed too much of the ghosts? Over exposure is never a good thing in horror movies and I think the filmmakers made a mistake of doing just that.

Also I thought some of the scenes in the later part of the movie looked funny and probably a bit corny. If they wanted to be funny, then I think that Sam Raimi did a better job with his movie Drag Me To Hell. Now that was one hell of an entertaining horror movie!



Still, I consider Insidious to be one of the better horror movies among all those mediocre horror movies churned out by Hollywood. I am rating it as follows:
Scariness : 6/10
Suspense : 9/10
Storyline : 7/10
Acting : 9/10

One thing's for sure though. I will never attempt astral travel. Not after watching this movie!

One fine Sunday morning in January, my two friends and I went to attend Joey Yap's feng shui seminar at KL Convention Centre. The seminar was scheduled to start at 10am but we were already in KL by 8.30am.

Why did we go to KL so early? To get the best seats at the seminar? Not at all.

We went early for our breakfast! It was a whole day seminar and we needed to fill our stomachs first! So we woke up early and I drove my friends to Yut Kee Restaurant at Jalan Dang Wangi.

We ordered lum mee. It was delicious!



Although we were early, there were already many people having their breakfasts there! We ended up sharing a table with a couple and their two children. Sharing table (or tap thoy in Cantonese) is a common practice in Yut Kee, which reminded me of how the people do it in Hong Kong.

We also ordered a plate of roti babi (bread with pork) to be shared among the three of us.



My friend cut the piece of bread into a few chunks.



We ate the roti babi by dipping it into Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce. This is a must when eating this bread. Ooh so yummy!!



I am not sure if I have eaten imitations, but this Worcestershire sauce at Yut Kee was the original one from Lea & Perrins.



Yut Kee is an old school Hainanese restaurant that has been operating since 1928. It is so famous that even my parents knew about it. I heard recently that the restaurant would be moving out of the building as the landlord had plans to develop the place. Read about it HERE.

There were a lot of delicious food I wanted to eat like toasted bread, half boiled eggs, kaya roll, butter cake, beef noodles and roasted pork (gosh, all so yummy!!) but I guess the Lum mee and roti babi were enough to keep me full until lunch that day.

After a whole day feng shui seminar with Joey Yap, my friends and I decided to go over to Petaling Street for our dinner.

We went to Koon Kee Restaurant at Jalan Hang Lekir for their famous wantan mee.



Do I spell it as wantan or wanton mee? Maybe I should just stick to wantan since wanton is not a very positive word in the English language!

Anyway the wantan mee at Koon Kee was delicious! The mee was springy, which was how I like it best! I never like soggy mee - all my mee and noodles must be cooked "al-dente", even instant noodles! Haha!

The char siu (roasted pork) was also juicy and succulent. Absolutely yummy!

The only problem was, they ran out of pickled green chilies which to me, is a must when I eat wantan mee! What a pity for that plate of wantan mee would have been perfect!



We had a bowl of sui gao (or pork dumplings) to accompany our wantan mee. The sui gao was so yummy I am having a hard time not drooling looking at this photo now.



Koon Kee was also another very old restaurant, started way back in 1947 by a couple from Guangdong, China. My parents told me they have eaten there many times during their younger days.

After this very satisfying dinner, I went to get myself a cold air mata kucing (longan with rock sugar) drink at the famous stall near the Koon Kee restaurant. I did not take a photo of the stall but if you go to Petaling Street and ask around, I bet people there will point you to the right direction.

OK, I have covered breakfast and dinner. What about lunch? I did not forget about lunch of course, but that would be another post for another day. Meantime, if you'll excuse me, I need to raid my fridge for FOOD!!

I love to go karaoke and sing my heart out! How about you?

Not that I am any good at singing, mind you, but isn't that what karaoke is all about? If I can sing like Adam Lambert or God forbid, Justin Bieber, I don't need to go karaoke, do I?

Last December, I went to Loud Speaker Karaoke in Kota Damansara for the very first time.



I usually go Redbox or Neway for my karaoke haunts, but I wanted to try this new kid in town.



The only thing I like about Loud Speaker is their touch screen unit where you can choose and key in the songs you want to sing! You can choose by country, language, top hits, new releases and many other categories!



I opted for language. Look! They have a wide variety of songs in different languages! OK, why is the word "English" spelt as "Englisd"?



OK I admit other karaoke outlets like Neway and Redbox also have all these options but they don't have touch screen units.

My problem with Loud Speaker is that their song selections were not as updated as Redbox or Neway. I tried to select Bruno Mars' Just The Way You Are, a relatively new song at that time, but I could not even find Bruno Mars in the male singers category! What a disappointment!



Now Redbox (picture above) may have the most updated songs compared to both Loud Speaker and Neway but I think their service sucks! The counter staff is rude (most of the time) and they like to disable the karaoke machine before your time is up! *

If you have ever been to Redbox buffet, you will know that their food sucks big time! If you are more into singing than eating, my advice is don't go for the buffet.

However, if you are more into eating than singing, then it's better to go to Neway as their food are much better. But seriously, if you are more interested in eating, why bother to go karaoke at all? Haha!!



Nowadays the newer karaoke outlets have wireless microphones. This is great because I hate all those wires hanging around that might cause you to trip over them!

But I hate it when I get screeching sounds from the mike! It's so irritating when I am singing my favourite song! Do you know how to prevent the screeching sound?

I was told that when the microphones and the speakers are too close to each other, they will cause an echo resulting in that loud irritating screech! So the solution is to move the mikes away from the speakers. Problem is, most of the karaoke rooms are too small for this, so perhaps you will need to turn down the sensitivity of the mike.

Well, I tried but it didn't really work!



Ok, I shall mention about the tidbits. Oh yes, I am never ever happy with the tidbits in karaoke outlets!

Now I am not complaining about the quality of the tidbits although they are not of high quality. Whether it is Neway or Redbox (I don't remember Loud Speaker has tidbits!), the tidbits are compulsory. Yes, like it or not, you are charged anywhere between RM12 to RM20 for the tidbits!

So when you enquire about the price, the counter staff will tell you the price per head, but that does not include the price of the tidbits! Why can't they just include everything in the price per head? Many people do not know about these hidden charges until they see the bill.

Would you like to hear me sing? I have recorded a small part of my own singing and would like to share it with you. I'll be singing my favourite Mariah Carey's song of all time, We Belong Together. Let's listen to it, shall we? Click below to play...(now don't puke!!! haha)



So how do you find my singing? Good? Bad? Pukey?

Of course it is not me singing! LOL!! It's actually Mariah Carey herself! But using this amazing iPhone app called Ringtone Maker Pro, I managed to change her voice into a male voice! Haha!!

This is my iPhone screen showing the fun Ringtone Maker Pro app.



Using the original song, I can create a ring tone for my iPhone. But instead of just creating a ring tone of the original song, I can speed up the song or change the pitch higher or lower to suit my fancy!

Notice the "pitch" buttons at the bottom of the screen? Mariah Carey's voice is at the "zero" level. To make her sound like a man, I tuned it down three notches to "minus 3".

That was fun!! Haha! I guess it's too late for April Fool's Day, but I hope you enjoyed this post! Now who wants to go karaoke?

*Based on my experience at Redbox The Curve

This is my last post on my Manila trip in January 2011. Can you believe I am actually feeling sad about it being the last post? I guess I have enjoyed blogging about the trip as much as I have enjoyed visiting Manila!

Where would I be going next? A trip to somewhere outside Asia would sound great, wouldn't it? A week-long Greece holidays perhaps? I would surely return with lots of photos and exciting stories to tell! But for now, let's resume with my Manila story : )

On my second last day (5th day) in Manila, I met up with Ishmael Ahab, my good blogger friend who stays there. He brought me to a buffet lunch at Kamayan which I blogged about HERE.

After lunch, we went to Rizal Park nearby.



This is the park where José Rizal was executed and became a martyr and national hero of Philippines. You can read more about Rizal Park HERE.

I took a picture of the Rizal Monument, where the statue of José Rizal and his remains were located. You might be interested to read about my visit to the Rizal Shrine in Fort Santiago HERE if you haven't already.



It was a nice pleasant Sunday afternoon and I remember telling Ishmael that the weather was perfect for strolling around the park.

There is a Chinese Garden here but we did not enter. I guess I was more excited about going to eat balut at Quiapo! Haha!



The park also has a man-made lake with a relief map of the Philippine archipelago in the middle. Unfortunately, I could not see the map very clearly from this spot.



We also crossed the Roxas Boulevard road to visit the Quirino Grandstand opposite Rizal Park. Ishmael told me that was the place where the famous August 2010 hostage incident that was beamed live worldwide took place - where Hong Kong tourists were taken hostage by a former national police officer.



As I was crossing the road, I noticed this funny road name. Ped Xing? It did not sound Filipino or Spanish but the word Xing sure sounded somewhat Chinese to me. What kind of name was that?



To my amusement, Ishmael explained that Ped Xing is short for Pedestrian Crossing!! The alphabet X stands for cross!! Huh? Like this also can?!



We actually did not walk all the way to the Quirino Grandstand as there was really nothing much to see. I however, just took a picture of that clock (above).

After that, we proceeded to the LRT station to go to Quiapo for the balut and kwek kwek which I have blogged in the previous post.

Now if you think balut and kwek kwek were the end of my Filipino foodie adventure, you are wrong. Ishmael brought me to SM North Edsa Mall to eat Wham! Burger next, which he said was even better than Jollibee burgers!!



The above is the front entrance of the Wham! Burger restaurant. As we were both quite full after the buffet and the balut and kwek kwek, we decided to just buy one burger and share.



Look at the beef patty! Although looking slightly charred, I learnt that 100% real beef was used! In addition, they used fresh vegetables too.



Ishmael cut the burger into half while I took the photo.



The burger was juicy and delicious! If I was not so full, I would have eaten the whole burger myself!



After that, it was time for me and Ishmael to bid each other farewell. It had been a fun outing with him and I hope I will get to see him again if I visit Manila in future!

The next day, it was time to go home. Truth be told, my 6 days, 5 nights in Manila seemed more like just 5 days to me. This was because on the 6th day, I had to wake up at 5am to check out of the hotel and take a taxi to the Pasay Bus Station, where I had to board the 6am bus to Clark International Airport.

You see, there was only one AirAsia flight back to Malaysia and it was at 11am. Buses to the airport were scheduled to depart at either 6am or 10am. Since the bus would take about 1.5 hours to reach the airport, I had no choice but to take the 6am bus. What a waste of my last day!!

In future, if I ever go to Manila, I would not fly with AirAsia unless they land at the Manila International Airport!

With this, I am wrapping up my Manila travel posts. Farewell, Manila!!

For those of you who have missed some of my Manila posts, here is the complete list.

1. From Clark International Airport To Manila
2. Lotus Garden Hotel In Manila
3. Shopping At Robinsons Place Manila
4. My Very First Jollibee Burger
5. The Manila Cathedral Of Intramuros
6. Exploring Fort Santiago In Intramuros (Part 1)
7. Exploring Fort Santiago In Intramuros (Part 2)
8. My Visit To Casa Manila
9. Baluarte De San Diego In Intramuros
10. Riding A Cannon At Baluarte De San Andres
11. Eating Dumplings At Dong Bei Dumpling
12. Exploring Binondo And Shopping At Eng Bee Tin
13. My Visit To Manila Central Post Office And Red Ribbon
14. The Manila American Cemetery And Memorial
15. Shopping At Greenbelt And Glorietta In Ayala Center
16. The Cheapest Way To Visit Taal Volcano
17. Riding A Jeepney To Picnic Grove
18. My Filipino Buffet Lunch At Kamayan
19. Eating Balut And Kwek Kwek In Quiapo

Coming Soon : My Very First Trip To Cambodia!