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That Little Wine Bar

Tucked in a quiet street lined with trees, just mere distance from the busy Burmah Road, is a restaurant with a nice ambience that with a little bit of imagination, can transport you to some place in Europe...

The owners are Europeans and they themselves are good enough models for the place; sitting at the veranda, enjoying a glass or two. Sure know how to give passers-by a good first impression.

This was also the place that gave me quite an eye-opening experience during my first visit. It's like a ritual of mine to try all the mushroom soups of different restaurants so it was no surprise I ordered the wild mushroom soup then. My expectation was of course, the usual creamy mushroom soup that we have come to expect from restaurants like this. What was served was a bowl of clear broth with mixed mushrooms thrown in and pieces of parmesan cheese, a dish that I would associate more with Chinese restaurants. I guess it was only due to my limited knowledge of European dishes but I knew I wasn't going to be ordering the mushroom soup the 2nd time around. It did came in an interesting-looking bowl though...

Didn't make any reservations but were lucky to get a table in an almost-hidden corner; perfect for privacy, photo-taking, and checking the place out ☺

The seared foie gras as appertizer was good (I know, I know I'm not supposed to eat foei gras and support the force-fed campaign but my friend had never tried foie gras before so...) Anyway for comparison, I would prefer chilled foie gras served with baguette - which I had in Paris - over seared.

What I would truly recommend is the mushroom quiche. Put aside the fact that anything with mushroom goes well with me 99% of the time, the mushroom quiche was simply delicious. The softness, airy texture combined with the savory taste of mushrooms....ahh, it's no wonder I ate quite a portion..

For dessert, it was apple pillow with cream and vanilla ice-cream. Oh, and it came with a generous dusting of icing sugar. Not too bad but not as memorable as the quiche though. (Yes, read between the lines; try-the-quiche!)

And I must say, they do have quite a selection of wine. From where we sat, we had a direct view of their wine closet. The house wine, Chilean merlot, was smooth yet not too strong. Okay, not an expert when it comes to wine but it did go well with the meal..

Overall, a great place for a quiet evening ♥

iPhone: Cut the Rope

It's been ages since my last game review. I used to play a lot of PC games but then it dwindled. There are just so much going on that games were sorta pushed down the priority ranks.

But not anymore. Not when I got an iPhone. You cannot begin to imagine the hundreds and thousands of games out there that you can play on-the-go and at any time of your convenience! I have even found myself playing games in the mornings while eating my breakfast *sheepish smile

The genre of games are massive. But if you are into iPhone games, I'm sure by now games like Angry Bird and Cut the Rope are household names.

I am not so sure about Angry Bird - not really my kinda game. On the other hand, I am a fan of Cut the Rope. It is an amazing, brain-tingling, patience-testing game with a totally cute interface. And cute is just not enough to describe Om Nom, the adorable monster thingy that appears in a box one day at your doorstep. It feeds on candy which you must, yes, "cut the rope" where it is hung on so that it drops into Om Nom's wide gaping mouth. Of coz to make it harder, you have to swing/cut the candy to get 3 bobbling stars in each level before dropping it to Om Nom to qualify for a 3-star expertise.

The main game comes with 6 boxes, each with its own theme and 25 levels. Naturally, moi's aim is not just giving the candy to Om Nom - its the 3 stars I'm aiming for (unlike a friend of mine who only played to go through the motions until I incepted her with the power of 3 stars!).

And since Thursday, I could proudly say I am an all rounder 3-star achiever *grins

Oh, and there's this free add-on where you get a holiday gift box with another 25 levels to complete. Also, did I mention how cute Om Nom is? Super duper adorable. Every single action/antics/emotions by Om Nom makes me go "awww.." I wouldn't mind such a pet..hey, just feed it candy only, rite? *winks

My Rating:

Your Song

Been at the top of my playlist for weeks - actually it was the only song I repeated...

It's a little bit funny
this feeling inside
I'm not one of those who can easily hide
I don't have much money
but boy if I did
I'd buy a big house where
we both could live

So excuse me forgetting
but these things I do
see I've forgotten if
they're green or they're blue
Anyway the thing is
what I really mean
yours are the sweetest eyes I've ever seen

And you can tell everybody,
this is your song
It may be quite simple but
now that it's done
I hope you don't mind, I hope you don't mind
that I put down in words
how wonderful life is now you're in the world

If I was a sculptor
but then again no
or a girl who makes potions in a travelling show
I know it's not much but
it's the best I can do
My gift is my song and
this one's for you

And you can tell everybody,
this is your song
It may be quite simple but
now that it's done
I hope you don't mind, I hope you don't mind
that I put down in words
how wonderful life is now you're in the world

ReC!Pe: Rye Noodle with Smoked Salmon

Another easy-peasy recipe with little over-the-fire cooking except to boil the noodles but can be pretty filling.. suitable as brunch on the go *winks

What You Need:

• Half packet of Rye Noodle (I used organic; can also be substituted with soba noodles)
• Smoked salmon (cut into tiny strips)
• Chives (snipped into thin, shorts strips)
• Dressing:
• 1 tbsp oyster sauce
• 2-3 tbsp olive oil
• Lemon juice (1-2 slices)
• Ground black pepper, to taste

What To Do:

1. Put water to boil and when ready, boil the rye noodles according to instructions on the pack.
2. Drain noodles and tip them into a large bowl.
3. Pour the dressing into the bowl, add the smoked salmon and chives. Mix well.
4. Serve immediately while warm. [I had it after it was cool and it still tasted pretty good☺]

Life of Pi

After months of struggle, I am finally done with Life of Pi. And yes, I am actually relieved.

This book comes with big words, mind you. I had to reread some paragraphs to let them sink in and at times I had to rely on Dictionary.com to give me a clearer picture - can't imagine it out if I don't get the meaning in the first place, right?

The start was pretty slow. I'd expected it to jump right into the middle of things straight up and have me in its tight grip from the beginning till the end. But nope.

Things only picked up somewhere in the middle when religions, a boat, a Bengal tiger, a hyena, a zebra, and an orang utan got involved. I was horrified reading some of the events that occurred. The words weaved good but often gruesome and tough images of life as a survivor on a boat.

What I really liked about the book is all the zoology terms and animal behaviors explained. How animals have no problems living their lives out in enclosed places as opposed to living wild and carefree in the jungles. Interesting points and perspectives indeed. And if you ever wonder how a ringmaster is able to tame those animals on show and made them do stunts like jumping over rings of fire, the book kinda touched about that too (A little along the lines of Freud & Pavlov...)

However I did not quite like the ending. Somehow things seemed a tad too bizarre and odd. I felt they didn't really make sense. Perhaps my logical mind was what caused the downfall. But come on, [spoiler alert] another castaway (what are the odds?)? A carnivorous island? I guess as a fiction-fantasy, anything can happen.

So it's down to a case of science vs faith. If you are the person interviewing Pi, would you choose to believe a fantastical but seemingly irrational story (according to the book, Pi is afterall an irrational number) or an alternative, far more rational version? For me, yes, Pi may be an irrational number but well, Pi is one of the mathematical constants that plays an important part in science...

Confuse yet?

Well, I guess sometimes faith and science go hand-in-hand...

At the end of the day, Life of Pi is one of those famous books - with a movie in-the-making - that grabs your attention with a neon-sign that says "YOU HAVE GOTTA READ ME!". But perhaps don't set too high an expectation when reading it. Anyway, I am glad I've read it and that's that. ☺

My Rating:

ReC!Pe: Potato-Egg Salad

It has been a really long while since I did a food/recipe post. And thanx to Australia's Jr Master Chef on AXN, I had this urge to cook (although sadly I am a gazillion light years from their level of skills - not to mention they are like only 8-12 yrs old!)

So to avoid any embarrassment, I'll stick to simple food that I can whip up in an hour or so in the morning before I rush off to work. First up, easy-peasy Potato-Egg Salad; good to go on its own or as sides. I had them as brunch to go with tuna sandwiches ☺

What You Need:

• 2-3 large potatoes
• 2 Eggs (hard-boiled)
  
• Onions (chopped)
• Spring onions (finely chopped to garnish)
• Lemon juice (depending on how sour you want your salad to be, add and taste accordingly)
• Mayonnaise

What To Do:

1. Boil potatoes until tender and cut them into cubes.
2. Shell the hard-boiled eggs and mash/grate them into a bowl. Add the chopped onions, lemon juice and mayonnaise. Mix well.
3. Pour the mayonnaise mixture thoroughly into the potatoes, then fold in the chopped spring onions.  Serve warm or cold (I prefer to put them in the fridge and enjoy them cold) 

Innocence

Ecstatic

♥ the packaging!

Comes with a complimentary measuring tape (so that you'll buy dresses from them next?)

But most important of all, ♥♥♥ the brand! 

My very first Victoria Beckham (and its all mine, mine, mine!)
...yes, it's enough to make depresso day go away

The Sire

Having heard of the place for a while now (probably years), we decided to walk in one night out of the blue to discover...

A nice place for quiet evenings; surrounded by eastern-western mix & match decorations and paintings. There's suppose to be a mini museum too somewhere on the 2nd floor but was too lazy to snoop around.

Appealing food; but it wasn't the best best mushroom soup for me (high marks on the presentations definitely). The lamb turned out quite rare - almost like "lamb-sashimi" - but lucky thing it did not have that pungent smell/taste that comes with lamb/mutton. Indeed the meat was actually pretty juicy and tender. Oh, and each meal came with in-house complimentary toasted cheese baguettes too which were crunchy and tasted good (but I guess cheese-haters would agree to disagree - and yes, I do mean you, miss-pretty-busy *lol). 

So there you go...The Sire  - checked! :)

P/S: Actually make that a double check....french onion soup is tasty and while the lemon grass chicken was palatable, it isn't a dish that will make me go back.

I hope

~ even if one of them happens to be an active volcano still

2010 was the year

• with many changes; some doors were closed, other windows were opened, a blog layout was revamped, Lost was no more ...
• olio pasta officially became a favourite - though mushroom soup still unbeatable at #1 - with home-made attempts too
• where series & movies continued to be a big part of my rot-at-home routine. Not forgetting the lovely, lovely animes that had me repeating their soundtracks over and over and over..
• I thought I'd read too little too few for the bookworm that I am but hey, I managed 12 (better than the 10 in 2009!)
• I did a number of crazy stuff like 

• going back to Europe & felling in love with it all over again, 
• covered almost the entire of Rome on foot, tracing the Path of Illuminati (kinda limping toward the end), and 
• finally fulfilling my lifetime dream of watching a Champions League match featuring Manchester United and David Beckham
• I experienced SNOW for the first time in my life and would love snow until the day I find myself stuck in a blizzard or something so that I might be able to understand why my friend in Chicago hates winter so much ☺
• my sleeping program went a little bonkers; from waking up early in the morning on weekends to needing naps right after dinner to can't-keep-my-eyes-open-nights..
• I won something from a radio station for the first time (and had to sing on air even though it wasn't part of the rules) but waited till the cows had all gone home before I finally had that Boyzone album in my hands
• I wished that some things were simpler, were different, were better, or that some things could be rewind (On that account, RIP my VCR. You have served me well) 
• where pictures spoke a thousand words and quotes drew a hundred pictures
• INCEPTION became a household word 
• I had an advertorial published in The Star newspaper with a frame and an empty magic dust pouch to go with it.

• my collection of "Beckham" jerseys were completed. [And no, no Chelski please ~!]
• I enjoyed many tea-drinking & macchiato sessions, just taking in the views and savoring the moments
• my iPhone became the camera-that-I-never-brought-out
• my car decided to die on me to earn a night in a deserted parking lot. "You should be thankful your tyres were still intact!" *shaking index finger with disapproved frown
• I learnt that if Plan A fails, there's always Plan B, C, D, E...well, you know how the alphabets go LOL

2011 is the year with much more to come; the good, the bad, the start, the end. So let's inhale and life goes on. C'est La Vie ~

HaPpY NeW yEaR 2011!

Kopi Cine

Always read about the little restaurants/cafes in the heart of Georgetown, Penang but have never visited any myself. Never was the food explorer really.

Until. Recently.

Sri Malaya was the first. Kinda liked the olio pasta they served (though my fren Anata felt it was not spicy  enough and went on to "improve" the recipe herself...) but the mushroom soup tasted weird.

[Oh, and Dome still serves the best spicy olio pasta to me.]

Kopi Cine is #2 on the Done list. Quite a cozy spot situated at the corner where Stewart Lane meets Chulia Lane (Ok, I googled that as I have zilch ideas when it comes to the street names and lorongs of Georgetown) that serves lunch, dinner and have a longer list of wines than it does with coffee. 

I think what makes the place unique is the big mahjong paper clipped to every table and a glass of crayons for you to start drawing while waiting for your food to be served. Actually we kept on drawing even after our food was already on the table...to the extend of moving the plates and tea cups around so as not to blocked the way. Next of course would be the picture-takings. Can't really leave without first taking shots of our work of art now, can we? 

Had the homemade chicken pie & mashed potatoes with caramelized onions on top. Perhaps because it was neglected in the cold for a while, the chicken pie only tasted so-so to me. Mashed potatoes was not too bad. And since its called Kopi Cine, we downed a single shot of espresso to mark that :)

Wouldn't mind visiting the place again to try other stuff on the menu (not aplenty but not too sparse either). Maybe in the evenings to capture a different ambiance.

Updated Nov 10th, 2011: Kopi Cine has since been relocated to Beach Street and renamed to China House.

Merry Christmas 2010

The best of joy, the best of cheer
For Christmas and the coming year ~

Here to help you notice the Rainbow

Greyson Chance - Waiting Outside The Lines

You’ll never enjoy your life,
living inside the box
You’re so afraid of taking chances,
how you gonna reach the top?

Rules and regulations,
force you to play it safe
Get rid of all the hesitation,
it’s time for you to seize the day

Instead of just sitting around
and looking down on tomorrow
You gotta let your feet off the ground,
the time is now

I’m waiting, waiting, just waiting,
I’m waiting, waiting outside the lines
Waiting outside the lines
Waiting outside the lines

Try to have no regrets
even if it’s just tonight
How you gonna walk ahead
if you keep living blind?

Stuck in my same position,
you deserve so much more
There’s a whole world around us,
just waiting to be explored

Instead of just sitting around
and looking down on tomorrow
You gotta let your feet off the ground,
the time is now, just let it go

The world will force you to smile
I’m here to help you notice the rainbow
Cause I know,
What’s in you is out there

I’m waiting, waiting, just waiting,
I’m waiting, waiting outside the lines
Waiting outside the lines
Waiting outside the lines

I’m trying to be patient (I’m trying to be patient)
the first step is the hardest (the hardest)
I know you can make it,
go ahead and take it

I’m Waiting, waiting, just waiting I’m waiting
I’m waiting, waiting, just waiting
I’m waiting, waiting outside the lines
Waiting outside the lines
Waiting outside the lines

You’ll never enjoy your life
Living inside the box
You’re so afraid of taking chances,
How you gonna reach the top?

101128 - Pic of the Day

Pic from Newcastle vs Galaxy [source: dbeckham.cz]

Galaxy might have lost but I'm sure everyone went home happy especially those by that particular exit ;)

The Book Thief

How I found out about The Book Thief probably deserves a post of its own, which involves a Taiwanese TV programme, a magic show session that saw a bell moved on its own while in a glass box preventing any interference, in what we are led to believe was swayed by the spirit of the protagonist of the book. (I use "led to believe" because the book is a fiction but the part about a spirit's doing..erm that I have no comment.)

Anyways, the book caught my attention and before I know it, I was done reading it.

The story is kinda sad and gripping, set in Nazi Germany, with the narrator being the infamous man (or thing) underneath that robe, holding a scythe. Though he did clear that up for us in a later chapter:

*** A SMALL PIECE OF TRUTH ***

I do not carry a sickle or scythe.

I only wear a hooded black robe when it's cold.

And I don't have that skull-like facial features

you seem to enjoy pinning on me from a distance....

The story opened up my eyes to how bad life was during the war, under a regime that believed they were the most superior nation in the world. But nothing could be worse than if you happen to be a Jew during that period of time. Hiding a Jew would be next in line. Halfway through, I was googling to read more about the Holocaust, the Final Solution and related topics. What I read shocked me beyond words actually. I'm not much of a historical buff [if you read this, you know who you are :P] though I've heard of the fearsome H-word and knew it was bad. But reading it (as well as the numbers) totally shook me to the core. It was not just bad, it was a million times worse. How could these things ever happened? What an ideology!

It's not all sad though in the book. There are funny moments as we read about how Liesel became a book (and food) thief, her friendship with Rudy (the boy who keep wanting to kiss her), her relationships with her foster family (who are really good people even though they used words like "Saurkerl", "Saumensch" and "Arschloch" as terms of endearment), her relationship with Max (a Jewish fist-fighter), as well as the neighbourhood residents, and we get to look at Max's drawings too, like some kind of graphic-novel of that era..

Also, I didn't know Death could be such a good storyteller. The way he moved from one event to the next, sometimes to some past/future events as he deemed necessary, dropping interesting info here and there. Plus he really couldn't care less about spoilers. He would be telling you XXX died out of nowhere and only then reverse-engineer his way back to how it happened. Yet still have us turning the pages. For that, kudos to Markus Zusak for such great writing prowess.

Lastly it's not always that a book had me wiping tears off my eyes. The Kite Runner was one. Now we welcome The Book Thief to that list.

My Rating:

If I Have a Yacht

~spotted in Cannes back in Feb '10

Masquerade

Happy Halloween, I guess?

Buried

One-man show.

But Ryan Reynolds manages to pull it through with a convincing performance and have the audiences (or was it just me?) in there with him in that ill-fated wooden coffin, sands, glow sticks, and all.

It is shows like this that brings the cynics out of us, or maybe it just reinforces it into us since most are probably somewhat cynical already. And you wonder if such cases are indeed happening. (Not to forget the very real head-sawing clip I'd seen once...) Totally sends shivers down the spine.

Recommended to watch. Storyline is pretty good, though not a pretty sight. Dialogues aren't bad and there are some actions too, involving a certain rattlesnake and mutilation. Plus a twist ending - which I'm a sucker of...

My Ratings:

"Peace not War"