No Finish Line...

Nuff' said

To all my detractors, those of you who have said to me that i'm just not good-looking enuff, that I just don't make the cut... well, eat your heart out !!!

I have my very own fanbase

Next stop, ManHunt - The search for the universe's next top model.

posted by CapArnabBrand @ 5:54:00 PM 23 comments

Birthday Boy Pandi

HAPPY BIRTHDAY PANDI !!!!! (I suppose by the time this post is up, its belated, but.... same la!!)

Tuesday was Pandi's birthday. For the benefit of those of you who do not know him, he sits on the same floor in the office as me, he stays in the same apartment as me (albeit in different blocks) and he's one heck of a good guy. Back to the birthday lunch thing.... He invites a few people, and i'm one of them see. 9 of us in total actually. So we go to this place that serves fine north Indian cuisine in SS15, Subang. Actually, I've seen the place a few times before, gone past it but never went in. You know why? Cos of the name.... Its called "Sheesh Mahal".

Yeap. You read that right. Its like uurrmmm... "Geez Expensive" or ... "Wahlau Pricey". But you know what, that place serves great food. Ambience is way cool, service attentive and the food tastes superb. Price wise? I dunno, Pandi took the tab (thanks man!) and gave us an excellent birthday treat. A couple of pics below of the place and the lunching group.

The girls start the ball rolling by whacking the food first

A long queue for excellent Indian cuisine

Birthday boy Pandi decked in bright attire

Once again, hope you had a great 29th birthday. Wooops. Didn't mean to announce how old you are. ;-p

Here's hoping you celebrate your 30th birthday with your wife!!!!

posted by CapArnabBrand @ 2:50:00 PM 0 comments

Happy Hunting!

12th August, Friday.
6.30pm – Met up with Jaycee at Taman Desa Waterpark for the hunt briefing and collected the stickers and goodie bags. Nothing much of note in the goodie packs, save for a bottle of sunsilk shampoo (about time too, Pantene supply running out ;-p). After briefing, we went home and dilly-dallied around while waiting for Jay and Jer to come over and prepare the all-important replenishments for hunt day (read: food… glorious food).
11.00pm – Sandwiches, croissants, hotdogs, etc, etc… prepared and packed. All 4 of us call it a night and retire to get some much needed rest for the long drive up to Pg.

13th August, Saturday.
5.00am – Bloody alarm rings non-stop. I slam the button and give the clock a shove. Stupid ass clock, ring so early for wat? And then it hit me, dammit… wake up. Hunt day today. Stretching & yawning & cursing, drag myself out of bed and get myself cleaned up. Everybody’s up, last minute packing and 5.50am, we leave for Desa Waterpark again for the flag-off. Reach the venue, switch on my digicam and find out that my battery is near dead. Great start I must say.
7.00am – Last minute briefing kautim and we’re off. Everything started well, we run thru the clues, treasures and its smooth running. A couple of clues don’t make sense to us and we start scratching our heads, and me, my ba**s. Should have put on the other pair of undies. Neways, we ‘try’ our best and arrive at the 1st checkpoint in Taiping with some time to spare.
12.00pm – Submit the 1st leg hunt answers and proceed to go to Pg for the 2nd leg hunt, which was all about challenges. We rack our brains trying to think of the possibilities… “What type of challenges har?” “You think they’ll get us to do this.. and that?”
1.30pm – Arrive in Penang, Prangin Mall. Look around and we couldn’t find the Philips stage at the concourse area. And no wonder, it was at the other wing, across the damn road, which by the way was filled with smelly, smoking buses. We get to the stage area and find out that the challenges start at 2.30pm. So we linger around and decide which one of us to perform which challenges.
3.00pm – Completed the challenges and we still had to wait for the last challenge, which was delayed to 4.30pm.. $%%^&*^Y&$%… So on to McD we went for a break and some fries.
4.30pm – Last challenge was for us to get 7 items that make up the word P.H.I.L.I.P.S. So with a lot of running and improvising, we managed to get it done in about 20 mins. Left Prangin Mall at about 5.00pm and got caught in the infamous Pg crawl from town to Bayan Lepas.

Fast forward to …..

7.30pm – Buffet style dinner at the Equatorial ballroom (that’s where we stayed btw). But dinner didn’t start till about 8.15pm. Who’s fault? Dunno la, some VIP was delayed in his hotel room I guess. Dinner was stupendous. Dinner was yum-yum. I’d do dinner again. Entertainment was pretty much entertaining. Host of the night – some dude named Jiggie. You would have caught him in the Malaysian Idol advertisement last year; the skinnier of the condo security guards singing about getting your visitor pass to park your car.


Damn cool stage setup and deco

10.00pm – Prize presentation. Boo-hoo. We didn’t win anything. Zilch. Nothing. Zero. But we had fun, and real serious fun too at that. Jay, Jer and Jac, it was fun all the way wasn’t it!!!
12.00pm – Zzzzzzzzz.

14th August, Saturday.
8.00am – Jac wakes me up. We wake the rest up. Breakfast at the same ballroom, but it was nothing like dinner. No way did it come close. No VIP mah. Sucks.
9.30am – All 4 of us toured the hotel grounds. Taking pictures galore, like the attention-grabbing people we most definitely are. Heheh. Jay, I ‘m still waiting for your photos so that I can post some of ‘em up here.


Lingering around at the hotel poolside

11.00am – Packed and ready for checkout. We went straight for Kek Lok Si temple in Air Itam, took the ride up to the statue, took photos, enjoyed the hazy scenery and then proceeded to the Air Itam market for some lunch. If you’re ever in the area, assam laksa at the market is unbeatable. RM2.20 a bowl. Laksa heaven. And the fried tofu was also so so so smooth. I am most definitely going back there again.


The only photo of all 4 of us

12.30pm – Stop by to meet up with one of Jay’s friends and we were off. KL, here we come! Apart from some minor glitches along the way, near Juru specifically (which I will not go into details), everything was smooth.
7.30pm – Dinner together and they dropped us off back in USJ.
All in all, a really hectic but enjoyable weekend. Save for the minor disappointment in not winning anything, it was a weekend to remember. Cheerios!

posted by CapArnabBrand @ 6:46:00 PM 2 comments

Ringgit Malaysia Lima Puluh Sahaja

It was all over in like what.. 2 mins? That was the speediest 50 bucks I spent in a long long while. Damn expensive 'cup of tea' if I must say so. My last piece of 'donation for a higher cause' was only RM30 (can't really remember when la); inflation does have its price.

So for the benefit of all you who have yet to experience this and are therefore unfamiliar with the procedure, below is an illustrated guide to you know what-


Take a substantially valuable ringgit bill out of wallet


Fold the ringgit bill twice


Hide the folded ringgit bill under your piece of plastic and hand it over

posted by CapArnabBrand @ 8:29:00 PM 0 comments

Muara Klang

Got an sms from one of my frens yesterday morning asking me to go for dinner.

Fren (sms): 2 9 dinner?
Me (sms): Where and what time?
Fren: 8pm, muara klang
Me: Dono where's that. Pick me up?
Fren: K
Me: Time?
Fren: 6.30
Me: Make it 7
Fren: K

After work, I get home, shower and right on time, my fren picks me up. He takes the Shah Alam route, and then on to Fed Highway and then he asks me "If i wanna go to Tanjung Harapan, do I use this way?" And I thought to myself "I remember Tanjung Harapan was somewhere across the world, in South Africa, according to my history books la.." "I dunno la. Never been there."
So he proceeds to call up another fren and this other fren does indeed give him directions to some place 'across the world'.

"U-turn, then get off Fed, go into Kesas towards Klang, turn off at Banting, go up the bridge and turn right, go straight all the way until a roundabout, take 9 o-clock, go straight until a cross-junction, take left then immediately right, 1st lights turn left, go until McD, then turn right, 2nd lights turn right, go straight on, after bridge 2nd lights turn left, go straight in & u will see Muara Klang."

Wahlau eh, siao or not?? Took us a whopping 1 hour and 45 mins to get there, with the jam and some missed turns. Hungry like hell already when we arrived at 8.45pm. And my heart took a dive. Muara Ikan Bakar??? We *bleeping* drove for nearly 2 hours for *bleeping* ikan bakar?? This had better be *bleeping* good.


Muara Klang... damn far... damn far...


Lots of urrmmm... greens..


Bridge over the Muara Kwai...


Huge decorative sampan

There were 15 of us, 14 adults and a kid. And since we were all famished, I supposed we overdid the ordering part. See, the concept here is you pick out the fresh seafood from huge tanks and they'd weigh it and cook it for you they way you please (limited to their cooking style also la). And we kinda ended up with a lot. And I mean a LOT.

6 plates of ikan merah (i think its ikan merah) cooked in 2 styles
3 plates of cockles
6 plates of ikan pari bakar (grilled ray fish)
3 plates of sotong, deep-fried and another 3 plates cooked in some sauce
3 plates of prawns deep-fried and another 3 plates cooked in tomyam sauce
2 plates of otak-otak (I dunno wazzit called in English, fish paste or something..)
Close to 8 jugs of juice


Loads & loads of sinful food...

The above photo doesn't really do justice. That is only one-third the length of the table, so you can imagine how much food was consumed on that hazy Friday night. All of us practically popped our buttons and those who were wearing tight fitting T's sure had a hell of a problem gettin out of them when they got back. And what about the bill? A whopping *bleeping* 700++ bucks..!! Luckily they accept VISA.

Summarizing the whole dinner affair using the internationally accepted 5 star rating guide:

Location: (-) * * * * *
Ambience: * * *
Food: * * *
Service: * * *
Price: *
Overall: *

I'm never going back there... ever again.

posted by CapArnabBrand @ 11:34:00 PM 1 comments

Dedicated To Woon Ching & Irene

This post is long overdue, cos this wedding didn't take place yesterday, nor the day before. In fact, J & I attended this wedding about a week before I started blogging. So you can't blame me for not posting about it then, cos technically I wasn't posting yet, then. Shucks, what the hell is wrong with me? I gotta stop making excuses. Couple o' days back, a fren of mine asked whether I managed to take any photos of this wedding, and I remember I did, so I dug into my mess of a cabinet, whipped out my digicam and voila! picture posting done.

So, ok... wedding dinner took place in Sitiawan, a small town in Perak famous for the Hokchiew dialect and self made millionaires. And who are the 2 main characters in this fairytale wedding? A certain buddy of mine from varsity, Woon Ching and his SIA jet-setting wife, Irene. Congrats you 2!!


Stage set for the bride & groom


My buddy & his wife


Anxious looking groom


Group photo with damn messy table

The wedding dinner was the typical chinese affair, 8 course dinner with loads of alcohol thrown in for good measure. Noise levels hovered around 17,000 decibels constantly (don't really know how loud is that, but damn loud la) and shouts of 'Yamseng....Yamseng!' filled the air. Kinda a contrast to the prim & proper westernized wedding receptions I see on tv.

Amongst my varsity buddies, Woon Ching's the 1st to get hitched. And there'll be more to come, soon, most definitely (read: Teik Seng... ;-p ) So guys, I'll be waiting for our next wedding gathering, and Woon Ching; "When's junior coming along??"

posted by CapArnabBrand @ 11:52:00 PM 1 comments

smaller > BIGGER

posted by CapArnabBrand @ 6:30:00 PM 4 comments