Me! MiNdBOx - When Love Found A Voice

Hmmmm...can't get enough of Alejandro Fuentes' songs just yet, though kinda suprised the lyric for this song is not on Google!

Enjoy it nonetheless.....

My Rating:

Me! MiNdBOx - Stars

The song caught my attention during yoga class last week (while I was trying to make the back of my head meet my big toe.)

A google later...

The song is sang by a 20-year-old kid from Chile who was the 2nd runner up in the Idol 2005 competition in Norway. Stars is a single from his Diamonds or Pearls album which reached #1, according to Wikipedia. Other songs that I'd since got to know (and enjoy!) are Sail Away, When Love Found A Voice, Crazy Dream Tonight, Something's Never Change, and Diamonds or Pearls.

One stolen look across the room

An elusive smile, but soon baby soon

One minute for every hour

But time hasn't been on our side, on our side

Still holding on

Been waiting so long

For that indelible touch

When the stars shine upon me

And the night feels so lonely

Then I only picture your face

And remember the days, nights

And how I spent them with you

I spent them with you

Two worlds under the sun

Will melt into one, just come baby come

All the signs say it's so

Pointed upon by the arrow of love

My coffee is cold, cause I've waited so long

The thoughts of your smile always makes me feel strong

I'm drawing a picture of you in my mind

And the thought of your smile is always making me

miss you so much

I spent them with you

I spent them with you

My Rating:

Donuts & Coffee, anyone?

Ah..the Pavilion, KL's newest shopping mall (there's also the Gardens @ Midvalley but not touching on that today) and with it, new brands, new shops, new food outlets. Pretty huge place though not all shops were opened yet - the names were already in the directories and I was looking forward to check them out only to find renovation in progress at their doorsteps *bummer

Anyway, the latest craze in town seems to be the dough with a hole in the center..yup with the newly opened J.CO Donuts at the Pavilion, the first franchise in Malaysia. Craze, you wonder? Believe me, if you see queue outside the shop, craze IS the most appropriate word...

J.Co is actually a chain from Indonesia and turns out it is owned and managed by Johnny Andrean, a famous hairdresser. There are over 10-20 choices of donuts to choose from ranging from the common ring donuts such as Glazzy (donut glazed with honey), Al Caponne (white belgian coated donut crusted with almond flakes) and Blackjack to filled donuts such as Copabanana (chocolate donut with banana cream in the center), Mango Bliss and Berry Blue to JCrown, J.Co's own version of premium donut, which can be distinguished by its unique-flower like shape such as the Oreology (donut coated with oreo biscuit bits.) Cheese lover? Then try Cheese Me Up, donut coated with low fat cheese. Health-conscious? Then there's a Miss Green Tea though it's up to you to decide how healthy it is =P

Of course I couldn't miss out the chance to try them, could I? I bought 1/2 a dozen (cost me ~10 bucks, cheaper than I had expected) but obviously both my mum and I couldn't finish it in one seating so we decided to keep them in the fridge for the next day. There are reheating instructions on the box and it only takes 8 seconds for the doughnuts to go soft again with the fillings flowing out when you cut into them..AH they sure melt the heart and mouth! Overall, they are good but it seems there are a couple more donuts shops around that some say are as good or even better..hmmm guess I'll have to do some comparison the next time I drop by ;)

J Co Donuts & Coffee

Lot 1.05, Level 1

Pavilion Kuala Lumpur

Jalan Bukit Bintang

Kuala Lumpur.

My Rating:

P/S: J.Co donuts may be good but the website sure isn't as according to Google, it may harm your computer. LOL perhaps it's a warning that these soft, fluffy sweetness could harm you too..they do go straight to your waistline! =þ

Bend the light!

A colleague gave me the link and I was hooked at the first level..hehe. It's actually a promotional site for the new movie The Seeker (now showing in cinemas) so it's kinda cool that they came out with the idea to embed a game in the site. There is another interesting feature on the site too, which I'll touch on later.

The how-to-play is pretty simple; place mirrors on the grid and rotate them to reflect the light to lit all torches to complete level; it's the where-to-place that can be tricky at times. And watch out for those TNTs!! They go KABOOM when light shines on them and you'll have to restart the level. To make it more challenging, there are a few types of mirrors, the ordinary 90° angle, a triangle that will reflect light into a two-way 90° angle, a parallelogram which reflects light into a 45° angle. Thus use the correct mirrors at the right locations to have the light reflected correctly. Easier said than done...sometimes. =þ

There are 20 levels to complete and though the levels continue to increase after 20, they are actually a repeat from level 1 again *bummer...would love if they have more levels but well, it's not an actual game site afterall so will have to make do with just 20. Also, the site actually remembers which level you had previously stopped at - provided you used the same PC again obviously. User-friendly, huh? So no worries if you can't complete all 20 levels in one seating...you can always continue the next day ;)

I only checked out the promotional site after playing the game (I never heard of The Seeker before that *sheepish) and interestingly the site has some "exclusive" content that can only be accessed IF you manage to unlock them. How? By arranging signs in the correct sequence. There are 12 sequences in total and nop, they don't make life easy by putting it in the site. Instead, the sequence can be found in the world around us e.g. their promotional posters, signboards, etc. You gotta keep your eyes open and look out for them. *ahem actually... google and you should find forums where people share their findings (& answers!) Anyhow, it's still a creative way of making people look at their work.

Oh as for the movie, it's an adaptation from The Dark Is Rising Sequence, a novel by Susan Cooper. Quoted from GSC website, "The movie tells the story of Will Stanton, a normal young man who moves with his family from America to an English village There he learns he is the last of a group of warriors who have dedicated their lives to fighting the forces of the Dark. Traveling back and forth through time, Will discovers a series of clues and Six mysterious Signs which lead him into a showdown with forces of unimaginable power. With the Dark once again rising, the future of the world rests in Will's hands."

Almost like another Harry Potter in the making, huh? But it's my cup of tea nonetheless..hmm maybe I'll check it out in the coming long weekend and post a review later kekeke...

My Rating:(For the game..)

Time is soft there...

Saw the review of this book in The Star newspaper sometime back and I thought it was a fiction. So made a search when I was in Kinokuniya one day, lo and behold, it was in the travelogue section. Although I am more a fiction person, I still gave it a try because the book is about a bookshop, the one thing that has quite a place in my heart, and indeed I was not disappointed. Even sweeter, it was all true...

As someone who can spend a few hours "lost" in bookshops, Shakespeare & Co. sounds like a dream come true. Reading through Mercer's eyes and I could almost see the place for myself, the residents, the tea parties, and of course the beauty and tranquility of Paris. True, life seemed pretty difficult at times but to have that freedom of just reading a book a day or midnight story tellings by the Seine under the shadow of the great Notre Dame or even taking a metro/train to go over to England, Ireland, Spain is something I would yearn for.

How I wish to drop by the shop, maybe even spent a week or two in the companies of interesting would-be writers, poets, and four walls of BOOKS! But first, I need to save enough for a trip to Paris from almost a 1/4 of the globe away...

For now, I can only be contented with a 360° virtual tour of the shop at http://www.sav.org/shco/ .

My Rating:

Dear Boys

Rarely do I watch anything to do with sports except for the occassional football matches where certain clubs are playing (like the game between the Red Devils & the Blues last Sunday), or when a certain No.23/No.7 is playing for club/country..*winks

So I wasn't expecting much when I watched Dear Boys, an anime centralizing on basketball.

Here we follow the Mizuho High School boy's basketball team in their progress to win the prefectural championship. All was not well at the start and there wasn't even a team to begin with! Well, there was a team until Takumi Fujiwara, a member of the team, punched the coach in an incident during his first year causing the entire team to be banned for a year while the coach was transferred to another school. With no coach and only 4 members remaining a year later, revival was literally impossible...until Aikawa came into the picture.

Aikawa was the captain of Tendoji High's basketball team and a famous player amongst high school basketball followers. Thus, everyone was shocked when he decided to transfer from a well-known team to an infamous one. The reason behind was because he no longer enjoyed playing basketball at Tendoji as he felt the fun of playing had been compromised in their strict quest to winning games/championships. At Mizuho, Aikawa is like the final piece to a jigsaw puzzle, helping to make the team whole again and with his passion & enthusiasm for the game, he convinces Takumi and the rest to play basketball again. Together, they manage to get Miss Himuro, the coach of the girl's team to coach them as well. And so begins their journey...

As I mentioned earlier, I didn't really had high hopes for the anime but before I knew it, I was following the story quite closely especially during the championship games. Caught myself leaning forward in anticipation when 3-pointers were taken (shown in slow motion for full effect!). And don't think because Mizuho is the main focus, they'll be winning games easily because they aren't! They have to fight for it and well, you need to fall down before you can grow up so it's not all a bed of roses. Furthermore, the anime focuses on the character development not only within Mizuho but rival teams as well.

Plus we'll find out that a 5-member team can be very risky because if one player garners 4 fouls, he/she is out from the game and when there are no substitutes to replace, playing with only 4 members is a handicap. Thus, towards the end of season 1, we see a new member introduced but we'll have to watch season 2 to find out what happen next. An interesting anime throughout though you won't see me watching real life basketball games anytime soon ehhe..I'm sticking to my old routine just yet.


P/S: Oh, in case you are wondering why Dear Boys is the title, it has something to do with Miss Mizuho. In the beginning, she seemed rather strict but later in the anime reveals her attachment to her "dear boys". And coincidentally Aikawa, the playmaker cum protagonist, wears the No.7 as well kekekke..


My Rating:

Sushi Week (Part 2)

Last Thursday, I was tempted again to go for a 2nd round of Sushi King's promotion when my colleagues decided to give it a try after failing the evening before due to long queues at one of the outlets near our workplace. Alas, it was not meant to be as there was already a few groups of people waiting in line when we reached. And with only 1 hour of lunch time to spare, to join the crowd was definitely out of the question!

I didn't felt too bad because I already had my chance on Tuesday *wink..but my colleagues decided they wanted sushi..LOL so where did we go but to the OTHER sushi shop - Sakae Sushi! No queues but it wasn't empty either...I bet those who didn't wanted to queue just went there too keke..

In a way, you can sort of enjoy similar promotion here as well BUT only limited to a few varieties with Salmon the most notable of all! That's right, Sakae Sushi has the cheapest salmon dishes on the menu. At only 1.90 per plate (yup, cheaper by 10 cents too), dishes range from sake (fresh salmon) to spicy salmon, from salmon maki to salmon/spicy salmon temaki. Even better, the price is fixed all year round!

Sounds too good to be true? Well, there's a check-&-balance in place but don't think it's working too well (at least not on me, it isn't.) Though they have cheap salmon, tuna, and a few other dishes, they have expensive CRABSTICK! For 2 pieces of kanikama nigiri (crabstick on sushi rice balls), you have to pay 3.90. Imagine that...4 bucks for 2 pieces of crabstick? No-way! You can get the same for only 2 bucks @ Sushi King and even then I never go for them...I think that dish will always be at the bottom of Sakae's graph of popular dishes LOL.

Overall, Sakae isn't such a bad place, the outlet in PG looks trendy with a monitor at each table for you to browse and place orders, and hot water taps to refill your green teas. There's more variety here compared to Sushi King as well and it's not only limited to sushi or the common bento sets. For discounts, you'll need to accumulate 500 bucks worth of receipts over a 3-month period in exchange for a membership that will last for....erm, I dunno coz I don't have one =þ

My Rating: (for the variety and the cheap salmons)

Sushi Week

It's that time of the year again for 's RM2 promotion where all plates on the Kaiten Belt go for only RM2 each (Normal price ranges from 2-6bucks depending on the color of the plates.)

PS and I couldn't resist the temptation and decided to go on Tuesday evening. It was already 7.30pm by then and there was quite a crowd waiting at the door; even our names had to be on the 2nd page of the waiting list! Nothing we could do but wait.......when this dude in front of us (who was with two other friends, a guy and a gal) turned around and asked "How about we join up and get a table? And you can pay 10% of what we eat later on.", kind of in a its-the-best-idea-i'm-such-a-genius-your-loss-if-you-don't-agree tone.

Actually, we didn't hear him the first time but when we did the 2nd time, it was an obvious NO! Even after he said the 10% part is just a joke, it was still a NO! Why? As simple as 1-2-3:

1) People usually come in a company of a minimum of 2 (There are people who came alone but that's another story.) Unless you have 4 people or more, you don't get to sit at booth-like tables but only at the sushi bar. There are more seats on the sushi bar than there are tables.

2) If you do the math, the probability of a 2 ppl company finishing their meals first is by far much higher than a party of five. Reason being, you only need 2 plates of each type of sushi for 2 person, whereas you need 5 plates of the same for the latter. And trust me, it's NOT easy to get 5 plates of the same sushi in one go, especially when it is unagi, or sake you are looking for (unless you are really, really, really lucky.)

3) So to agree to such a deal as joining up for a table is absurd, and to entertain the idea of paying 10% of their meal is hilarious!

Though we said No, that we'd rather wait, the dude tried to convince us by saying you never know, the table might be empty first, or there might be 3 vacant seats first, think carefully, it's a chance of a lifetime (Okay, maybe I added the last 4 words but that was what he made us felt.) Well, if this guy is in Sales line, I'm afraid he might not make it very far LOL. To make a long story short, two vacant seats showed up and eventhough there were 3 groups in front of us, including the dude's group, all of them were made up of 3-ppl. They have a choice to split 2/1 but none wanted (Imagine the "lucky" one ended up sitting alone between 2 gangs having a good time! How pitiful...) So yours truly and friend got in first! LOL and if we wanted to be mean, we could have held up our green tea cups to him while looking at him from the inside of the glass panel.... *cheerz

Come to think of it, there are a few possibilities as to why the dude did what he did:

a) In that instance when there were 2 other groups of 3s in front of him, he realized the significance of the phrase "2's a company, 3's a crowd" LOL. First, the chance of having 3 seats in row emptied is rather low (see above 1.) Second, even if there are, the other two groups would beat them to it first. But if we were to team up and a table goes vacant, voila, we're in! So why didn't we agree to gang up? See above 2.

b) The guy was hoping we were bad in maths..LOL. Cheap meal is good, cheaper meal is better!

Anyway, the night still ended on a high note as we got all that we wanted - unagi, sake, smoke salmon, ebiko, chuka kurage, scallop, ebi...*winks

My Rating: (delicious sushi, ~50% saved in total price..seriously, I wouldn't mind if the promotion goes on forever =þ)