Hello... Restaurant!

As part of my weekly 'new food' campaign, I decided that this Saturday I would try the "Kantin Aneka" at Lucky Plaza, which food I did not get to try the last time, as I was stuffed.

As my mouth watered (eeck) in anticipation, I made my way up to the 6th floor, to be greeted by the signboard "My Favorite Cafe". Erm.. what on earth? Seems that the stall, which was supposed to be only about 3 weeks old, has closed down. (Well, they did ran out of chicken last week...)

Not to be daunted, I went to find the "Es Teler 77" (name mispelled in the Lucky Plaza website) stall instead, as it was said that the Lucky Plaza stall serves better tasting fare. When I finally found the stall, it was kind of half open. (The metal grille for when the stores are closed was still halfway down, and there were nobody in sight.) The clock showed 11.45am. I was thinking, "Do these people know how to do business? A food stall that is not operational at lunch time. Great."

I got the feeling that today could be a "No Indonesian food for j00! kind of day", until I remembered that there is another stall there that I wanted to try. It is the "Ayam Penyet Ria".
Off I went again to hunt for the stall and this time, I found a live one!

I was actually quite impressed by the decor of the stall (can now call it restaurant!). The lighting was warm, and the furniture leads to a cozy feel. The ambient music could be better though, and they need to wedge the wobbly tables, as well as screen off the kitchen better from the dining area. (Constructive criticisms here!).

Now, to my pet peeve. Service is practically nonexistent! As I walked into the store, no server greeted me. As I walked to the cashier, no server greeted me although there were 2 of them "doing dunno what" just behind the register. I decided to go end find a seat on my own, and waited a while. Still no server came to attend me, or gave instructions on how to order. I finally noticed the 'order sheet', filled it up, and proceeded to the cashier. (The register broke down at this moment.) Luckily the boss was there by then, and he asked me to just sit down, enjoy my meal and pay later. As I was eating, I continued to keep an eye on the servers, and I'm sorry to say, they really, really slacked. I could have told the boss about the service level I guess, but hey, I'm not a paid consultant.

The food was actually pretty good. It tasted authentic, but slightly on the 'light' side (not as heavy in taste as the ones back home). The sambal is potent, good for those who like it hot and pungent. The dessert, however, was badly done. I ordered 'Es Campur', which means 'Mixed ice', that tasted like a mixture of 'Ice Kachang' and 'Chendol' (not so good ones at that). I might be back for the food and decor, might...

Something else kind of irked me. They translated 'Ayam Penyet' as 'Smashed Chicken'. 'Penyet' is a lot closer to 'Squashed' rather than 'Smashed'. And the chicken was not even in a condition near enough to justify being called 'Smashed' (It was a little tough :P)

On the other hand, lucky Plaza is really turning into Little Philliphines. Even the starhub advertisement there is in Tagalog...

Update (23Nov2005)!
It seems that Kantin Aneka is only open on Sundays. There is chance to try it out yet!

School of hard knocks

A recent post elsewhere made me recollect my internal (self) discussion about education.

We might as well all just learn the 4 basics (Maths, Language, Art and Science), and there should also be intermediate - advanced Maths, Language, Arts and Science for people who want to take them, as well as other subjects, such as Humanities and even *gasp* Politics and Religion.

Add a new*compulsary* subject called: "You, and others"

This subject consists of modules such as:

"Who am I" -> teaches people how to find their personal resources (quirks, strengths, weakness, passion, etc.)
"Confidence, it is in you" -> teaches people to be more daring in taking risks.
"Decision making" -> teaches people how to manage that risk.
"The philosophers stone" -> teaches people how to find information they need.
"School of wizardry" -> teaches people how to gain knowlege and skill by themselves, and how to retain as well as use them.
"How about lunch?" -> teaches people how to obtain, and maintain good relations.
"吃驚（びっくり） Bikkuri - Be Creative" -> teaches people to activate their brain.
"No Problem" -> teaches people problem solving methods (even unothrodox ones).
"See no evil" -> teaches people to be more observant.
"Hear no evil" -> teaches people to be more attentive.
"Speak no evil" -> teaches people how to be more eloquent.
"Survival in the wild" -> teaches people how to survive in a wild environment. (Test will be 1 month living in a jungle or something)
"Men are from mars..." -> name explains itself

Plus others, and most importantly:

"Garbage in, garbage out" -> teaches people the importance of asking the right questions.

(Extra credit for guys only: "PMS 101")

Random Quotes I

I think I'll start collecting quotes that amuses me.

Here's one:

This is the nature of working for a company for a long time.
You work your ass off to get in a position where you can screw off.

The *other* office Dragon.

You know that these guys work for a fun company, when you have a huge dragon statue suspended in your buiding, and it goes along to be installed in their new office.

WoTC moves house

Crossed pedestrian...

When it takes close to 10 minutes to get cross a road at a road junction, something is wrong. I really dislike road junctions with only 3 pedestrian crossings, like this:

A------B
I
I
I
D------C

Getting from Point 'B' to point 'D' means crossing at most 2 roads.
However, if one happens to want to get to point 'B' from point 'C', he or she will have to cross 3 roads, because there is no crossing there! I do not get this, the cars will have to stop anyway, why not provide a crossing there? An encouragement to Jaywalk, at the least...

Anyhow, I was at the GAMECON1 meeting yesterday, and I was quite amazed at the scale they are trying to pull off. An estimated number of 5000 visitors per day over 2 days, and the convention area is going to be larger than a footbal field (18000sq feet).

There will be miniature games (Warhammer etc.), collectible card games (M:TG, etc), and board games (Avalon Hills, etc) being showcased there as well as some prominent speakers from the game design industry. I have confirmed a place for myself to be one of the volunteer boardgame facilitators contingent from Singapore, and I think they might still need a few more people (around 6). We are expecting to have to take care of at least 80 tables. Those who are interested can find more information from the Singapore Boardgamers link.

GAMECON1 is being held in Kuala Lumpur, MID Valley Convention Center, 3rd to 4th December 2005, 10 am - 10 pm. For those who are interested in signing up just to enjoy the convention, do come down to Settler's Cafe (the one in the city) on the 1st of November, 7:00pm onwards, to see what travelling packages are available.

Collective noun: A Canteen of Indonesians?

After the talk, some (4) of us adjourned to this newly opened Indonesian canteen located at the 6th floor of Plaza Singapura. (After much hemming and hawing of what to do and where to go.)

We sat down and begin ordering our dinner (none for me as I was still quite full). To our chargin, many of the food set we tried to order were out of stock, and even most of the drinks were out of stock. (Indonesian efficiency I tell ya...) But the food was pretty good (enough to make me salivate), despite the price (a little on the high side, but cheaper than restaurants) and we got a 10% opening discount (that, and we got to wait 30 minutes to settle our bill because there was a sudden influx of like 20 other Indonesians as we were leaving...)

Turned out that this one guy who was with us (he shared a surname with a certain famous racer) was invited to go out by no less than 3 groups of people, and he managed to draw all of them to that place! (Man.. good for business...) I have not seen this many Indonesians informally gathered before other than the 'Sunday crowd' around Orchard MRT...

It was an interesting outing to ole' asocial me, and I managed to find someone working in a tour agency to fix up my GAMECON1 trip for me! Whoot! (She's pretty cute too.. heh heh heh)

Speaking about the "Indonesian efficiency"... A collague of mine asked if there is a boat service plying between Jakarta and Bali. I thought, why not? and helped her search. Well, the result was zero, nada, none. No boat route from Tanjung Priuk (Jakarta) to Benoa (Denpasar). There are ferry services from Bali to East Java, and that's it.

What really irritates me though, was the Pelni (Indonesian shipping monopoly...) website. They did not even list their available routes, nor the name of cities correlated with the ports! I can *slightly* understand if the Indonesian page does not have it, but the English page too? (Oh yeah, foreigners are all suposed to be well versed with the names of each port in Indonesia, there's no need to provide the city names.) Their city search function is broken, their pricing info is broken, and other stuff are broken too.

And they spelled "Creativity" wrong... (top right hand of page) among other things.
Then, I noticed that the copyright tag is for year 2003, and their latest news is for February 21st 2005... *slap forehead*

Heard them one.... heard them all...

"Did you notice that you were taught everything in school, except for how to build a career?", said the presenter.

"There were tonnes of things that schools don't teach, like how to get a girlfriend, and how to wisely invest your earnings", crossed my mind.

I was attending this mini seminar about "How to build a more successful career" at Great World City. Overall, the talk was pretty all right, although I seem to receive mixed messages from the presenter at times. E.g. - he said that one has to learn to trust one's intuition, and follow a career that is more suitable to one's basic personality, but then he said that one has to make a commitment to gravitate towards a faster growing industry (what if the industry/position does not suit one's personality?). We managed to get quite a few tools on career advancement (some of which I have learnt already), but no mention on how to resolve the conflicting directions (like what if I don't want to become a manager?). So I am having mixed reviews.

One thing that sticks out for me though, was his initial question about "do you plan your vacations?" to which I immediately responded "No." (internally). Then he goes on to say that people put more time in planning their vacations, that last maybe 4 weeks in a year, compared to their careers, that takes up anytime between 26-42 weeks of a year (averaged to be 60% of our lifetime according to studies). He then followed up the reasoning by saying that, people do not plan, unless they fully realize what are the consequences of not planning. In the case of a holiday, it would result in a nightmare (missed flight, mixed up hotel room, etc.) Yet it is not so easy to plan for a career, because the consequences are largely unknown. Unfortunately, he did not manage to make it clear what is the consequence of not planning one's career, and if there is a way to find out, because each person (as he said it himself) is unique. (Especially a person like me, who don't plan holidays.)

I find the 'holiday planning' comparison to be not very suitable. When one plans for a holiday, there is a specific place to go to, how to get there, and what to do there. For a career, there might be positions one aim to get (that may not be there in future), an industry one tries to go into (that the person might not be qualified in), a specific skillset that one wants to learn (that might not be available in one's country) or a specific company that one wants to get into (that have all the three 'improbabilities' mentioned before). It would be like planning to go into a country that may not exist by the time you get there, not knowing how to get there (paddle boat maybe) nor what to do there (reality in an industry is usually very different from what people tell you.) Plus, if it takes 8 days total to plan for a 4 week holiday, it would take 50 days to plan for a 26 weeks career. And the most interesting holidays usually happen because of unplanned events (pleasant ones of course).

On top of that, he kept on emphasising on how he could not know the consequences of the things he does. Like, this seminar would not have happened if he had not written an article in the newspaper 1 year ago. And he again said that he would not know the consequences of him giving this seminar. (Like that how to plan? Doh...)

I guess the statement "something that works for you may not work for others" is very true. At least I have my goals, now just to figure out how to get them done... No timeline though, I hate deadlines :P

Live a life...

Skimming through blogs do really make one wonder at the way people lead their lives, doesn't it? (Like some people may wonder how on earth I survive by 'boring' existence because I do not do things that they deem to be 'exciting' or 'fulfilling'.)

There are people who really experience their life, and shares it freely as it is,
There are people sharing interesting and amusing things,
There are people creating interesting and amuing things,
There are people who are enjoying the things that I am deprived of, but still complain anyway,

There are people who rant most of the time,

Perspective is a wonderful thing if used properly.
And hey, most people don't change until they really, really, really have to (as in the alternative is perceived to be worse than keeping the status quo.)

Then comes the tougher part: maintaining the result of the change.

Latest news:
I did not realize that Penny Arcade has this much clout-

Beware the wrath of irritated gamers

A brand, that sizzles...

Whoo.. that was some excellent meal.

My folks are going back home, and we had a nice dinner at the Parkway Thai restaurant in Centrepoint. 7 dishes, and only about 20 bux per person. Still one of my favorite Thai restaurants in Singapore.

Anyway, as I was walking to the dining venue, I passed by the Robinson store front, and was greeted by an impressive sindow display. Gone were the mannequins, and in their place, the bright interior of the shop. Right in the middle, a sea water fish tank (by their colourful inhabitats and anemones) caught my eye. It was a very nice display, until I saw the brand that is perched on top of it. It said Lamer.

*blink blink*
*blink blink*

Oh.. it is La mer. But.. but.. it still sounded soo much like the other word...
People really should be more careful when picking brand names.

One of the quite succesful brand that I saw in Japan was: Comme ca ism.
The store is basically like a Muji store, except that while Muji is "Brandless" (無印), everything in the store is a 'Comme' item.

I wondered why this particular brand is so successful, until it dawned on me what the brand might mean: Commercialism.

Live a life, be alive

This is a good article about, well, life, by the CEO of Pixar Studios.

Linky

Although i'd still have to say it is easier to pull off such things in one's own home country (where there's no immigration issue, etc). And even more true if one is living in a country with some 'welfare' system.

I am at least already 50% to my target wen it comes to a career though, and working towards the other 50%. Now... running my own business would be another possibility...

Snap! That'll be 12 dollars please.

I *was* in need of several passport photos!

My parents are in town visiting, and my dad brought with him a form for me to fill in and renew my Indonesian "Identity Card". I really feel that Indonesia's way of keeping track of their citizens haphazard at best, and money + time wasting at the best. Get this: everytime you renew your ID, you get a nice new set of numbers. And you have to do it like once every 5 years. Where's the efficiency in that? (It's just one more way to make us part with our hard earned cash)

Anyway, I am glad I have my dad to take care of the administrative works. All I have to do is fill up the forms, get a thumbprint, signature, and photographs. Now, I usually go to the automatic photo taking machines whenever I need my fix of Pass-photos, but since I do not know of any near my living/working place, and this is quite a sudden request, I decided to pay a visit to my neighbourhood bridal studio instead. (How convenient, just as my mom's been hinting that I should 'settle down' soon)

To my surprise, they did have instant photo sevice, and the price is the same as the automated one. Except that for 12 bux, I get 8 photos on a nice, clean backgrund, a photographer, and get this... a CD-ROM containing my photo! Wohoo! Now that's what I call a bonus. In the age of digital photography, photo studios has to remake themselves to remain competitive, and looks like this shop has just earned itself a potential long term customer. (If the lady boss was a little friendlier, it won't just be 'potential'. I am a picky customer.) At least it has opened my eyes to better photo possibilities.

Sense of entitlement...

The game I am currently playing is having a server maintenance to clear up bugs and other stuff. Then I went to the games forum to find out what new things has been added to the game (that might have caused the bugs). Instead, I found people complaining that the company is refusing to 'compensate' them for the downtime. They feel that since they paid to play the game, they are entitled to full uninterrupted gaming, x24 hours, all the time.

I find it rather sad that these people do not realize that this 'downtime' is what allowed us to play the game smoothly. As far as I know, an average server downtime of 1 day over 3 months shows a very well maintained server. And once every three months, some idiots will come and complain about the downtime, and there would be a flame war in the forums, which makes it very difficult to find any useful information about new updates. Unfortunately, I do not have any idea of a Japanese equivalent for the forum that I visit to make a comparison.

Is complaining a basic human nature? Even if the point is absurd? The sense of entitlement that some people have really amazes me. Here I am, still thinking that I have to work for a lot of the things I want, and not just have them given to me because "I am entitled to".

Playing in a world that is populated by 2 differently polarized cultures really makes for interesting observations. For one, English speakers tend to trask talk when in a group, even with strangers about. I have never had a Japanese speaker do that.

The chill is in the air...

Then I'd better put up my next haiku.

銀杏葉　（ぎんなんは）
燃えよう森で （もえようもりで）
落ち散れる　（おちちれる）

The Ginko tree leaves
Mirage of blazing forest
Falling to scatter

Of nuts and bolts....

The internet is a vast collection of information. But I might as well be in a musty library looking at hundreds of thousands of tomes when it comes to findin some type of information.

I can find the latest modified Computer casing, its discounted price, what can it hold, etc. But I can't for the life of me find out the name of that little protruding part from its side panel that fits to the holes in the frame. Neither can I find the name of the rail that can be found inside a Flash memory slot. (I am pretty sure some technical people out there have names for them...)

One would think that there should be at least one easily searchable site where there is a fully labelled pictures of these stuff... but no~~~ siree. You have to go through a dungeon and slay the invisible dragon first before you can get the key to a treasure room, filled with hundreds of fake chests.

Gah, at least I found out what they call those little white plastic parts that is used to keep a computer memory board in place. They are called ejector clips.

Beer, Ale and Stout.

This weekend I got treated to a sumptous feast at Brewerkz by a very, very generous friend.

As it was my first time going into this type of establishment in Singapore (an English Bar category I suppose?) where a myriad variety drinks are available along with generously portioned food and munchies, I was quite impressed by the place. It was huge, and even then, it seems that reservations are needed to get a place there during the weekends.

Now, I am really clueless when it comes to beer, and indeed, when the taster set came along, I found that I can hardly differentiate the tastes. To my pleasant surprise, I actually found one type of brew that I could agree with. It was called Golden Ale, and it is not as bitter as the other samples. The food is great (learnt some things about eating there...), and looks like I found an excellent place to introduce to my Japanese teacher who loves to drink beer.

Things learnt from this outing:

1. If you intend to drink there, do come early. The price can be as much as 50% cheaper for drinks before 6.00pm (even cheaper before 3.00pm).
2. If you intend to drink more, do not bother getting a main course. Their finger food come in generous servings, and is very tasty.
3. For first timers, just start out with the sampler (they come in small glasses that is roughly equivalent to 2x shot glasses each).
4. If you intend to get a Tower of Beer (3.5 litres), order fast. (They ran out of towers by the time we made up our mind of which beer type to order.)
5. Some girls develop this fascination with the smell of burning matches when high. (first time phenomenon...)
6. Sitting next to your significant other during a drinking game is very detrimental to your performance. (Especially if you're a guy, but hey, you have nowhere else to go most of time :P)

I think that drinking game is more fun with small glasses though (then you can do many many many bottoms-ups). And there are some people out there who you really just should not play with (cause they can make you drink yourself silly...)

An interesting outing, on many levels. Kinda weird too (in my opinion). But you have to be there, and know the background story to really appreciate why I feel weird ^^;. Overall, very nice! And I'd like to thank that particular person again for the invite, and the surprise treat.

Gamer's blogs

Woohoo!

I just heard that Blogcritics.org has just added a section for gamers (most of it are online stuff I am sure, but maybe there will even be some board games review and stuff)

Looks like I may be spending some reading time there in future.

On the other hand, I found the online Anime Radio. Pretty cool too! They are mostly newer theme songs though, none of those from the 70's.

Update:
The games section is supposed to be a separate category and not finalized yet.

Are these guys for real?

Welp... I got this 'viral video' sent to me.

It was basically about which country should be 'taken care' of next in the fight against the 'invisible enemy'.

You'll see different people naming a country/countries, and giving some weird reasons.
The interviewer then asked them to pinpoint on the world map, the country they just nominated.
Here's the kicker:

1. None of them got the location of their choice country right.
2. A *lot* of them picked Australia...

There could be some correct picks that got edited out in the newsroom, but the level of ignorance is pretty astounding.

Linky

Arr matey! That's my elephant you got there! - Gamer's Meetup 04 Oct 2005

In this installment of Gamer's meetup, I only got to play one game with Sonic. But from what I heard, he did pretty well on the railroad games without me to distrupt his schemes. Muahahaha!

Anyway, I only got to play 3 games this session as 2 of my games required quite a lot of rulebook reading. Shows that you really got to read the rulebooks well, and play at least 1-2 games before trying to teach other people how to play. (But I was not the one doing the teaching, oh well...) All 3 games were 5 player games though, so it was the 'optimal' number all the way.


The first game we played was:

For Sale
The objective of this game is to accumulate the most money by buying and then selling properties. Basic gameplay: the game is divided into 2 parts.
In the first part, players bid for the property cards on the table (numbered from 1-30 and revealed some at a time) with the money they have. Each bid has to be higher than the previous one, and each player starts with 14 million dollars. The player with the highest bid gets to pick a property from the table, and pay the bid in full. The rest pick their properties in descending order, and pays half their bid, rounded up.
In the second part, players will use the property cards they obtained from the first part to bid for title deeds with worth from 0 to 15 million dollars. In this round, bids are revealed simultaneously. Highest bid pick first.

It was quite a fast paced game, and I forgot where I placed, but my other friend, Mr. D, managed to win with a comfortable margin. Sonic made some early bidding blunder and fell with me somewhere in the middle of the pack.

I then joined another table to play a pirate game (forgot the name), and Sonic went on to play Ticket to Ride: Europe.

The objective of the pirate game is to gain notoriety, and become the most feared pirate on the 7 seas. A player can gain notoriety by either: Defeating another player, finding and hoarding treasure chests and gold, and defeating Legendary Pirates or the Royal Navy Fleet (played by the board). In order to do this, each player will have to travel to various islands to collect treasures, and either use the treasures to upgrade their ships or hoard them for notoriety. Combat is done by dice, and there are funky 'Tavern cards' that a player can use to swing the battle in their favor.

I could not find my sea legs fast enough in this game, and more often than not, got sunk rather than sinking other people. There was also a few bad 'Tavern cards' play on my side, and despite all the threats of keelhauling my crew, I only managed to tie with the player to my right (for last place). The winner was Mr. A (the same guy from last month), and he did it by amassing a huge load of treasure chests, and defeating a legendary pirate for 6 notoriety! (Plus he sunk my ship twice, one of where I played the wrong card...) There was also a memorable battle revolving around shooting birds... (parrots to be exact :P)

The last game I played was Taj Mahal.
This game is set with an Indian background (duh...), and each player plays as a prince who is vying for influence to be able to sit on the throne. This is a bidding game, where you can score influence by either: building castles, winning the hand of princesses (harem, oh boy~!), and gaining trade for commodities. The rules were in German, and we had another Mr. A explain the rules for us. Players use cards to bid for the type of influence they desire for 12 rounds.

After intense political manouverings, Mr. A (the other) won the game, and I somehow managed to tie for 2nd place with the person on my right (yep, the same person). I think it was because all of us underestimated the value of commodities (and I got outmanouvered by Mr. A for 6 influence points in one region that I was eyeing). It was a game that I am very willing to play again though.

Coffee, Tea, or Pizza?

Whew, there was an extremely long queue at the canteen today (over 30 people). Times like this, I am glad to have a more flexible lunchtime compared to many other people.

Anyway, talking about food, I was walking towards Takashimaya for my weekly comic fix when I passed by a Rocky Master outlet offering pizza slices for $2.50, or pasta dishes for $4.50 if you buy a drink. The outlet was beautifully located by the sidewalk, and the seats are under a nice cool shade, with a stream of flowing water right beside it. So I decided to try this place out for lunch. After all, how much could a drink cost right? (Wrong).

I ordered a fruit tea for $3.30 (more expensive than the ->) a slice of beef pizza, and took a seat. I have to admit that I like the ambiance of the place (despite being initially shocked by the price of the drink), and since the pizza is made on order, it was piping hot, and tasted really good. (Reasonably sized too)

I guess I should have expected that the price of a drink at a cafe like this would have come with a Starbucks range price tag, just another learning experience. But the pizza was really good, and it is more affordable than going to Pizza Hut (even counting the drink!).