Bahasa Malaysia Class

I had to take this class while in Malaysia.

Ever Think You're Stupid?

If you've ever thought of yourself as stupid, or wondered where you are on the intelligence scale, let this guy set the bottom marker.

Licenses are apparently given away here...

Toronto's driver testing facilities need an upgrade if this guy can emerge as "passed."

Shoot Yourself

If you ever catch yourself resembling this man, er, thing in the slightest, pull one up to your head and let 'er rip.

One of the BEST chapats ever!

Try and pay close attention to what he says. I'm trying to provoke him to talk more (by giving him a friendly goodbye) but it doesn't work.

MMU...serving up quality education...or not

There isn't much to say about this. Just try and see if you can understand what she's trying to say. Look out for the chapat who asks a question. This will either crack you up or have you shaking your head in disgust.

The Malaysian and the Furious

I rented a car while in Malaysia, and it actually turned out to be a riced-out Accord! These things are hilarious from the point of view of true car enthusiasm, in that they're just wannabes, something like painting your computer case black, installing neon lights and pretending/thinking its a cutting edge supercomputer. Whats really bad is the cheese with which riceboys go about doing things.

Honey, forget the sunblock, I'm gonna take my winter coat instead...

Its 36 degrees outside. The humidity is nearly 100%. You're under a tropical sun, pretty much right at the equator. What would be your choice of clothes? Shorts? T-shirt? Hawaiian shirt? No shirt? Not in Malaysia. There, you'd wear a winter coat.

Goat, Transported

I was driving to Mines from Cyberjaya once, and there was a considerable amount of traffic in the other direction. A quick glance later, it looked like some sort of competition. A couple of minutes later... we see a gigantic goat (or whatever the hell it is) being transported. Its just standing in the bed of a pickup truck doing well over 100 km/h, and trying its level best not to fall off. Damn thing looked freaky!

Designer Condo, Cyberjaya, Malaysia

I was pulling out some old videos to post, and here's a little tour of our friend Mohammad's room.

Anjappar All Over Again

There's this restaurant I used to go to in Malaysia every once in a while, Anjappar. They have Chettinad cuisine, some sort of South Indian fare, but I would go there for their Chinese food. It was like a getaway from Malaysian food in Malaysia, with vibrant flavours and my favourite reason, deveined and deshelled prawns. Damn all of Malaysia for not deveining and deshelling their prawns! I had gone there thinking seafood would be awesome, and what did I find? Lobster for CAD $60? Prawns that seemed have crawled right out of the ocean and into the wok? I also found prawns there to be very, very inferior to Maritime and US East Coast shrimp, as well as Chinese prawns. They were kinda devoid of flavour, and what bothered me the most was that the delicate texture we all have come to know and love was just not there. More often than not, I found prawns to have a solid butter-like texture; you could just sorta cut right through them. Anyways, Anjappar's prawns for some reason didn't have that consistency, so even though it was expensive by local standards (RM 13 for 4-6 prawns) I really enjoyed their Chili Prawns dish. I usually can't take spicy stuff at all, but I'd put my burning tongue aside cuz in this dish, the prawns was covered in an absolutely delicious .. umm ... paste sorta stuff. That awesome flavour would find its way into the green peppers as well. Since that was one of like three dishes I really liked over there, I decided to give the same resto in Canada a try.

Now, lately, I've been hating our lax immigration policy. There are too many FOBs coming in, and they're starting to mess with society a bit. We have always had good customer service, but since the arrival of the FOBs, it has severely declined. I called Anjappar up and asked them if they have the Chili Prawn dish, and the guy on the other end, obviously an immigrant, said yes. I then proceeded to ask him if it would similar in style and taste to the dish I had in Malaysia, and he said in an Indian accent the size of Yukon, "Of COURRSSSE it is exactly the same style. Heh." His tone also said "For FUCK's sake. How stupid can you be? DUHHHHHH its gonna be exactly the same dish as you had 25,000 kilometers away! What, did you think it would be different???? How stupid are you?

So I almost didn't go, but since my fiancee was really looking forward to the Chili Prawns, I gave it a shot. As I drove up, I noticed that there was no one inside, and chalked that up to being a slow Monday. We went in, and the resto looked decent enough, and we grabbed a nice table on an elevated platform near the window. I placed my order for Masala Dosa (for my mom), and ordered us two Prawn Fried Noodles, Chinese Style, Manchurian Chicken in Gravy, and of course, Chili Prawns. The waiter represented his country to the T, and added to the ambience with his own unshowered and ungroomed presence. He brought out the Masala Dosa first, a good 15-20 minutes before the rest of the food, because he thought that we here in Canada also like to let one person at the table eat first, then let the others eat while the first one watches. Well, we don't. The Dosa was good, for sure, but 6 bucks? We have places specializing in this stuff (like the Dosa Hut) and charging 2-5 bucks, what makes these genuises think that its okay for them to charge 6 bucks? The size was so small we ate it up like an appetizer. These guys really didn't do their homework when they came to Canada. They didn't understand that it takes more than what they had to compete against Toronto's restaurants. Toronto, according to the UN, is the MOST multicultural city IN THE WORLD, and is North America's SECOND BEST city for food after NYC.

Yeah buddy, you serve your little portions and you TEAM that up with your high prices!!! There's a recipe for success!

The Chinese stuff arrived, and the noodles were very overboiled and soggy. They had too much of the overboiled taste, and not much of the Chinese treatment came through. The prawns were breaded and deep-fried then cut into pieces, and tasted alright, although, all they had going was the flavour of the meat itself; they weren't supported by the cooking in the slightest. The Manchurian Chicken and Chili Prawn looked exactly the same, and I make a remark to that effect. Waiter-guy said "you said gravy." I said, "if you remember correctly, I said that in reference to the chicken only." I politely asked him to take it back and bring what we had ordered, and although he was very reluctant, he did it. Since he came back in about 2 minutes, I can only assume he did not recook the dish, only rearrange it. There's no one in your restaurant, don't you think you should be taking care of your ONE CUSTOMER a little more????? The Chili Prawns tasted nothing like they did in Malaysia, and from no angle did it appear to be the same dish. I really hate how FOBS speak with such an ego about stuff (the dish is obvious going to be the same, how stupid are you?) and the fact that they're pretty much ALWAYS WRONG. The fucking bill hit 50 bucks, and for 50 bucks, we could have all had all-you-can-eat ribs at Montana's, the massive buffet at Mandarin with money to spare, or 24 pieces of Broasted Chicken with a good 20 bucks left over. We could have gone to Lucky's and pocketed half the money too.

What those dumb fucks don't understand is that with their ego, stupid service, crappy food and idiotic waiters, no one, including me, is ever going to return. Hence, the empty parking lot.

I have truly arrived...

After enduring an arduous three years, one month and eight days to complete my formal education in SE Asia, I have returned home. Actually, I returned home almost four months ago, but haven't blogged since December. My experience in South East Asia was, naturally, mixed. There were good times, and there were bad times, and the experience will never go away. I will go into the details of "the experience" as I like to call it sometime later. Since I'm back home, there isn't much adventure to write about, other than the urban adventure we call wining and dining. I'm gonna be talking about some of the hobbies that I've gotten into and will get into.

So I've gotten a place, a condo. Its a one bedroom plus den and solarium, so its quite decent for us. I've gotten pretty much all the AV gear I wanted, which mainly consists of:

-A 61" 1080p DLP Samsung TV. I chose this based on information from the AVS forum and reviews. It was a choice between this and Sony's 60" 1080p SXRD TV, but reports say that after calibration, the Samsung looks much better. Also, the Samsung accepts 1080p over component, and its piece-de-resistance, it allows for overscan to be turned off on HDMI input. This is really useful because I had planned to integrate an HTPC into the setup, and use it as my main computer. To do this, the display would have to be great, and the Samsung fit the bill.

-HDTV PVR cable box (if you don't know what this is, its a digital TV/HDTV tuner box, that allows you to do things like pause live TV, record TV shows, record 2 TV shows while watching a 3rd, scheduling recordings of your favourite TV shows etc.)

-A Harman Kardon AVR 140 reciever. I was originally gonna go for a top-of-the-line Pioneer Elite model than can switch 1080p HDMI sources, but I thought I'd wait until they become more mainstream. Plus, with a reciever like that, I'd feel obliged to pick up some crazy speakers, and then everything just adds up. It turns out I found a brilliant deal on this receiver. Harman/Kardon is one of the premier names in sound, in fact, they INVENTED the reciever! So this was a good addition to the setup. Interesting story - I had at some point thought that I should go cheap and get a HTIB (home theater in a box). I shopped around, and everyone seemed to recommend a particular Sony setup (people recommending Sony? weird...) so I grabbed it. Supposedly pushing 1100 watts, the receiver was outputting to a 10 inch powered sub and 6 satellites, but when I plugged it in and connected the DVD player, I found it to be underpowered and tinny sounding. Not being in Malaysia anymore, I could crank up the volume without others hearing it, and when I did so to the point I thought was umm... enveloping, the reciever was at max volume. Those were some lazy 1100 watts. The speakers sucked too, and seemed to be of the quality of free-in-the-box computer speakers. I returned that shit right away (thank God I'm back home!) and shopped around. It took me a few days to decide, but I finally settled with the HK.

-Harman Kardon 5.1 speaker system. I was originally going to get the Bose Acoustimass sound system, as I liked the demo they had running at Future Shop, but after listening to these speakers, I was sold. They sounded as good for 60% of the cost, and looked better to boot. 10" Harman/Kardon subwoofer? Can. Beautiful, 3-way directional satellites? Can.

-Samsung HD-DV960 DVD Player. I cheaped out in the beginning and bought this over a Toshiba HD DVD player. Later I regretted it, but I wouldn't have had much to play on the HD DVD player anyway. I'm now selling this to pay for the PS3, but basically what this player did was upscale DVDs and output them at 1080p over HDMI. Everybody said there's a significant difference, especially with the Faroudja video processor and all, but I never noticed any difference. I do notice a difference upscaling on my computer though?! I didn't use this much, and it wasn't amazing, AND I got it for much less than the regular price, so I said hey, why not use the PS3 to play DVDs and get rid of this? So it is no longer.

-XBOX 360 Premium Modded. One of the first things I bought, it was supposed to be a rational choice over the PS3 based on number of titles available and yes, price. While the 360 looked decent enough over component at 1080p, it didn't blow me away. I've read some technical articles about the CPU, a 3-core, RISC affair that is pretty far beyond desktop CPUs at the moment, and thought that it would look great. In reality, the graphics look like PC graphics from a few months ago to a few years ago. The only game that had really good graphics was Gears of War, and that too didn't absolutely blow me away. It also made a huge difference if a game was 1080 or 720p, as the latter just sucked. A game I was really looking forward to, Test Drive Unlimited, looks better on the PC, and not so amazing on the 360 IMO. Well, I sold it for the Wii, thinking it'd be a lot more fun.

-Nintendo Wii. Since these are out of stock everywhere, I had to buy one from a "street guy." Price was almost the same though, so it was ok. Wii Sports is a good addition to the console, and its real fun lies in multiplayer. When we first got it, we played tennis quite a bit. All the games are fun, except for golf, which I'm not into much. For some reason, we haven't played the Wii much since we got it, but its a cheap console, and we're looking forward to Super Mario coming out on it, so we're gonna keep it for now.

-PS3. The latest addition to our setup. Used the money leftover from the 360 and combined it with the sale of the DVD player and our Nokia N80 to get it. First I bought it from Future Shop with the intention of returning it to see if I liked it. The first thing I downloaded was Gran Turismo HD 1.1. That just sold me. The graphics are stunning, like nothing else I've ever seen, and the realism of the driving is superb. I got it partially for GT alone. We then downloaded the demos for Motorstorm and a bunch of other games, but Motorstorm stuck out as being a good game. Tried out the browsing, its as good or maybe better than the HTPC in some ways! Now I have gotten used to nice-looking HD broadcasts on TV, and movies in HD on TMN, and from what I've been told, the HD discs (BD/HD DVD) look more or less like that. That is pretty wrong IMO, because even the MP4 trailers I downloaded (NOT in BD quality) looked much better than broadcast HD. That got me thinking, and I said hey, reason #2 to get a PS3... Blu-Ray movies!! So I returned the PS3 from Future Shop and bought one for $250 less from a "street guy."

So now all that's under our TV is the PS3, HD PVR, Wii and reciever.

The Remainder of Stuff For Sale Urgently!!

Hey guys! Thanks for the quick sales of stuff. The last few things are for urgent sale, so act quickly, as I'm selling them off at basically throwaway prices!!

- The car (Volvo 244 GL)

- The sofa (IKEA Klippan)

- queen size mattress

- HP 3745 Colour Printer

- toaster

- sandwich maker

- kettle

- Sony Ericsson W800i walkman phone

You can find descriptions for most of these things below, or call/yahoo me for more info. But act quick, as of today, only 17 days remain till I leave!

012-976-1649