Archive | 2006

Sunrise Jazz & Rhythm Festival 2006 – Mon’t Kiara

So last Friday night I headed down to the Sunrise Jazz & Rhythm Festival 2006 at Plaza Mont Kiara featuring “Rachel Guerzo Quartet” and “Lewis Pragasam & AsiaBeat” on the opening night.

The host was some pale dude called Michael Quah I think, they had a fashion show early in the evening which I missed and some small competitions between the musical segments.

It was quite packed, with not that many places left to sit, my friends and I got a place at Starbucks to enjoy the music.

Jazz Festival

First up was the Rachel Guerzo Quartet, a lethal father and daugther combo with Rachel Guerzo of course, her father Salvador Guerzo, Vincent Ong, Don Nizam and Louis Saliano.

Rachel Guerzo

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Continue Reading · 9 Comments · Parties & Gatherings

A Trip to Dubai – Day 2

So I had a free day, what to do..

I asked around and it seems there isn’t many attractions in Dubai, the Burg Al Arab area…Emirates Mall and its snow thing, some other shopping centres and that’s about it.

I wanted to find a street market or Bazaar, so I got recommended Deira, about the nearest you can get in Dubai.

It’s a bunch of streets and alleys with various shops, mostly selling Gold and Fabrics like Burquas and Pashminas.

Fashion!

There’s also electrical shops and all the other normal stuff.

We headed to a Pakistan restaurant for lunch.

Pakistan Restaurant

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Continue Reading · 6 Comments · Dubai, Trips & Travel

A Trip to Dubai – Day 1

So off I went travelling again, via Doha airport this time (Qatar).

I love airports..because? They are full of booze!

Booze!

Touching down in Dubai I found it extremely hot and a rather depressing grey colour and yeah hot (if I didn’t mention it already).

I asked a few people and they said the sky is grey/brown all year round, it is in the middle of a desert after all.

Dubai Skyline

They have some amazing architecture though.

After my initial meetings we headed out to grab some food and stumbled into a decent looking Turkish joint.

Luckily the exchange rate is 1 to 1 with RM, so it’s easy to calculate prices.

We looked through the menus, not knowing what anything was we asked the boss a few times, after a couple of minutes he grabbed our menus and stated

Menu? No need menu ok? I give you some beef, some chicken, good yah?

So we agreed of course, then the food started coming…and coming..and coming…we asked him to make sure there was no more, thankfully it did eventually end.

Turkish Food

There were beef, chicken and lamb kebabs, salad, beef and lamb stews, some bread, lots of salad, some rice and some other stuff..

One thing I do like is in Dubai all food is served with salad, sometimes salted sometimes pickled, but there is always salad and fizzy drinks..

Turkish Food Gone

It cost us 112Dirhams, which is equivalent to 112RM.

After that we headed back to the hotel to take a rest, everything is pretty much closed in Dubai from 11am to around 3pm as it’s too hot to do anything, so most shops just close, even some malls aren’t open, but they do open till midnight to compensate.

I could use my Malaysian ATM card there too through the Cirrus network, which was useful, it did cost me RM8 to withdraw money though (I had USD but the money changer was closed..)

Later in the evening we headed to emirates mall, that’s the famous one with the huge snow slope built on the side.

Emirates Mall

The shops are full of rows and rows of Bongs Shisha and other shiny things.

Shiny Stuff

The snow slope thingy.

Snow Slope

It was pretty expensive to go in so I didn’t bother.

Grabbed a sandwich for dinner, something like Subway but a different brand, cost about RM25 with fries and a drink.

Everything is about double the price of Malaysia, so if you are spending RM it’s a bit pricey, seems like not much to do or see either..

Continued with part 2 tommorow!

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Continue Reading · 11 Comments · Dubai, Trips & Travel

Oh Dear..

My place was so dirty, even the cockroach that came in died.

Cockroach

Perhaps that explains why I haven’t been well! Haha.

Don’t worry I cleaned up, everything is spotless now.

Clean Bedroom!

Was pretty busy this weekend, went to the opening night of the Jazz festival on Friday night and the Lantern festival on Saturday night, w00t.

Will post some pix soon, look out here and on DigiSniper.

And the whole of Sunday night was cleaning appt top to bottom…

Need to go shopping for a camera for my Mom soon, her 60th birthday present.

Bah, really need to start going back to gym aswell, feeling rather round.

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Continue Reading · 8 Comments · Weird/Humour

Places to Eat in Mon’t Kiara – Maredo’s Argentinian Steakhouse

Awesome steak, best best steak evar. Eagle’s Nest was good, but I still prefer Maredo’s.

Maredo's Steakhouse

Really, I love it. It’s a little pricey for lunch but seriously I never regret it, it melts in your mouth.

Set Lunch

It comes in at RM24++ per person, not bad for the quality.

It’s different every week or so, first time I went was black pepper, second time was a bit fruity, 3rd was gravy and mushrooms…all goood.

The decor is nice with lots of wood and huge Argentinian prints everywhere.

Maredo's Decor

The set lunch comes with access to the Salad Bar which has some decent variety.

Salad Bar

This was my choice.

Salad

And yes this is what we came for, here’s my medium ‘doneness‘ Steak.

Medium Steak

An obligatory mystyle close up 😉

Steak Close-up

Of course I polished it all off, I could have whacked another one too…arghh heavenly.

Empty Plate

Writing this is making my stomach rumble..

Come join me for lunch!

Food seems to be the most popular request for me to write about…it’s just there’s so many food blogs around nowadays, it seems a bit boring.

I’ve still got loads of posts about food to write…just got overloaded with seeing all the shitty quality foodblogs and bad pictures of food, kinda demotivated me.

I know mine is still the best 😛 But I don’t like being part of a crowd. Since I got the SLR I don’t take much pictures of food, it’s a bit bulky to carry to dinner.

I need to start pocketing my A70 again and taking some snaps of nice things I eat! The K750 doesn’t really snap great pics indoors.

That’ll give me more stuff to blog about, yay for food.

I wanted to get some more pictures from my phone but for some reason it’s playing up and I can’t detect it, I really need to reformat my PC, it’s getting screwed up…and it’s starting to be a burden using Windows 2000 as some things don’t work (Like Windows Live Messenger..) even though I love it for it’s stability and security. Ah well.

To all the people who suggested topics, thanks some great ideas. Will get round to them 1 by 1, watch this space.

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Continue Reading · 27 Comments · Food/Eating

What? Nothing..anything?

Kinda brain dead from all the travelling..

Anything you’d like to see me write about?

Any questions you have about anything (me, computers, etc..)

Yeah, lazy, give me some inspiration.

I guess this is a quiet spell, I’m all written out.

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Continue Reading · 15 Comments · General Nonsense

Flying back…

In a couple of hours, just surfing on the 20RM an hour Internet in the hotel lobby, things are incredibly expensive here..

The exchange rate is 1-1 pretty much (1RM = 0.994 Dirhams or something) but everything is double the price, no wonder people love taking holidays in Malaysia..

A KFC meal will cost you something like RM18.

The chicks here are smoking hawt though haha.

Here’s my favourite pic I took today, will post the whole series later on flickr, when I can access it..

Frozen Moment

Flickr is banned here by the countrywide proxy, also banned are any URL’s with FUCK in them.

Yeah, amazing eh?

Don’t forget to check DigiSniper – there’s been some great stuff posted there while I’ve been here.

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Continue Reading · 10 Comments · Trips & Travel

So…Where am I Now?!

Hmm so take a guess, where am I now?

My new ride?

Bentley Continental GT

Optical illusion tower..

Optical Illusion Tower

Argh…travelling so much gonna be hectic.

People that know, obviously aren’t allowed to guess 😉

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Continue Reading · 20 Comments · Trips & Travel

All About My MONSTER!

Well as some of you may have noticed there’s this new blog collaboration thing in town called MONSTER Blog, between Jaring, NST and a bunch of nerds collectively known as bloggers.

MONSTER Bloggers

https://www.monsterblog.com.my

There are a few more details on the about page and an article was published in the NST on Saturday!

NST

(From Peter)

You can see the Online version here:

MoNSTer move into blogging

I know my design is beautiful right hahah (I didn’t do the banner though, I’m noob at that).

Do check it out and show your support, leave some comments, bookmark it, come back later.

There will be 2 posts a day, each person has a ‘slot’ and they post about a certain kinda topic on a certain day so the blog will have a rythm to it kind of like a traditional publication.

It’s a collaborative effort between the old media and the new media (us?) so there you go.

We aren’t getting paid if you are wondering..you can call us elite if you like, but we all have more than average traffic for some reason or another.

This is a community kind of effort, so do show your support, write about it, cuss it, discuss it, say it’s great, whatever you like.

Do comment on my intro and my other posts!

Others who wrote about it:

Kim: I am a hot moNSTer.
KY: KY @ Monsterblog.com.my
Sultan: MoNSTer blog mucul!

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Continue Reading · 13 Comments · Internet & Tech

Movie Review – Tom Yum Goong (Tony Jaa – Ong Bak 2?)

Tom Yum Goong

A young fighter named Kham must go to Australia to retrieve his stolen elephant. With the help of a Thai-born Australian detective, Kham must take on all comers, including a gang led by an evil woman and her two deadly bodyguards.

Ah yes, much like the one before it, the legendary Ong Bak! Ong Bak was a low budget martial arts flick that everyone fell in love with, why? It’s super brutal realistic fighting and stunt sequences, like a blend of Jackie Chan in his early days for the crazy stunts, Bruce Lee for his rawness and energy and Jet Li for his finess and fighting accuracy.

Ong Bak remains one of my favourite martial arts movies of all time, I can watch it over and over and over.

Tom Yum Goong is similar but has the feel of a much higher budget, some CG some expensive toys and explosions, Bondesque boat chase sequence and some helicopter action.

Much like Ong Bak the script and plot is something you wouldn’t even wipe your ass with, but that doesn’t stop it from being an awesome film!

The acting is so-so, but once again the fight sequences will blow you away.

Fight!

This was my favourite, with a wu-shu style swordsman, a huge scary white guy as seen above (Nathan Jones, he’s been in some Jackie Chan flicks, Fearless, Troy etc) and some guy that could do Capoeira with such style, really really amazing.

The scene was filled with water and had a perfectly lit flaming backdrop with a buddha watching over it all, really really good.

Another good one is the fight all the way up the stairs, taken in 1 shot, unbelievable filmwork really.

The first 10-15 minutes of the movie are quite slow, very arty, nicely filmed, nice shots of Thailand etc..but really you are like OMFG KICK SOME ASS PLEASE.

The subtitles are non-existent, they only show up when people say something really obvious, or they speak in Chinese or English, at which point if they are speaking English, I really don’t need the bad English subtitles ok?

Not that you need them, the movie is about some dude trying to find his elephant and kicking 72 kinds of ass along the way, that’s it, end of plot summary.

Petchtai Wongkamlao was funny as expected, him being one of Thailands most prolific comedians. Bongkoj Khongmalai was very very sexy *pant* as the lost girl in the wrong place.

This is a really great martial arts movie, I loved it and will watch it again shortly (the ass kicking parts anyway, perhaps not the soft focus shots of Elephants).

If you are pretentious about movies, are looking for a plot, don’t enjoy action..don’t watch this movie.

However if you love to see some dude demonstrate 101 ways to break someones arm, do watch this movie!

I give it a well worth it 8/10

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Continue Reading · 12 Comments · Movies