Mini road trip to Malacca

I drove all the way back to PJ from Malacca last Sunday night! I can't believe I did that considering that I don't even drive in KL and I've never driven long distance before. I know la, F1-drivers-wannabes reading my blog are already thinking " What la! Driving from Melaka is long distance? Pfftt! You whuss!" But that's them and they are not me so it's a 1-hour-and-30-minutes achievement for little ol' non-driver me. *grin*

Estella, Jaymee and I drove down to Malacca on Saturday night. It was a spur of the moment thing. All I can say is that we were bored. Haha. Kinda cool as we all have been feeling the need to get out of town for quite a while now. Estella and I were scratching our heads thinking of what to do on Saturday night and we didn't want to go clubbing and spend money on alcohol and deplete our energy bar on something as mindless as that. Yeah, the lure of clubbing is finally waning for me and I'm growing up. ^_~ Age and having lack of money does that to you.

Jaymee's from Malacca but you wouldn't be able to tell, coz she really has no sense of direction and I say that honestly and not spitefully. Thank God we got a map from a dinky little hotel called Accordian Hotel. The moment we stepped in there to ask for the room rates, I felt "unclean" even though the place smelt like disinfectant! Later found out that someone got murdered in that place. Eesh.

After that, we tried the Emperor Hotel and the indian man manning the reception was so snobbish that I wanted to cosh him one,and pelt him with the ugly brochures proudly displayed on the desk. We asked for the room rates and stupid me mentioned that we were driving around town looking for a place to stay. With a blink of his stupid long-eyelashed eye, he smoothly said, "we don't have anymore rooms available except one... (loooooooonngg pause... probably have difficulties pulling out the stick in his ass before speaking...) Except one, the suite...... (looooonnnggg pause again... trying to remember what a suite is) it has a connecting bathroom (well duh), a double bed and we can give you another single for a fee...we also have a living room and a dinning area (well, you don't say!) all for the sum of-" at which point I cut him off "A suite huh? Nah, can't afford such 'wonderful' luxuries! See ya!" I'm not trying to be racist here, but the words "dirty indian receptionist bad-blue-suited scum" flashed in my head when we were striding out. His blazer looked like one from the reject store of the 70's, coupled with his pink-yellow and baby blue striped tee shirt, thick gold necklace and mini currypuff hairdo, he's all ready for a cheap Bollywood wannabe productionn about the sad receptionist who watches too many old indian movies and who hopes that some obscure porn starlet staying at the hotel might pick him up!

Sorr, major ranting session there. In the end, we ended up at Mimosa Hotel which was reasonably priced (RM128 weekend price) and clean and with a nicely kebaya-clad receptionist. Jaymee went to stay with her aunt, so she didn't have to spend money there. Lucky girl. Why did't I go knock on my long lost relative's house, introduce myself as the fourth or fifth cousin and ask to stay the night? =P El Cheapo!

The next day, we crawled out of bed and made the last 30 minutes of breakfast, which was a sad, sad affair. But then that's to be expected. But at least they had western fare. This is where we see the true Malaysians' and Singaporeans' greedy double emerge. Ok, so it's a buffet breakfast and the amusing thing was that when we walked in, a lot of people got up to take more food, even though they looked like they've already finished eating. By the time we got our coupon, and found a place to sit and went to get something to eat, the only food left were a smattering of bake beans, a small "mountain" of sliced sausages fried with onion, broken and soggy fries, 2 pieces of white bread, couple of the jam and butter blocks, coffee, tea, mango juice and a whole pot of friend mee (which was too hot, tasteless and not fresh). What choice did we have? While we were at the almost-empty buffet table, one chinses guy came up next to me and grab the rest of the butter and jam blocks! So that's how you become rich! Stay at cheap hotels and raid the breakfast buffet of everything except the cheap plastic jugs!

The rest of the afternoon was spent wandering down Jonker Street. Wish we could have stayed till night when the place starts rocking. Love the architectures of the old shop houses. It's amazingly long and deep but with a narrow front. There are many interesting shops selling wonderful stuff from clogs to hand-painted tee shirts (which I think is a Singaporean thing, so I didn't buy). I bought a couple of soap stone pots for aromatherapy at a steal - carved soapstone from India. After the small shopping spree, we took our pineapple tarts and my dodol to Klebang Beach for some R&R for our poor aching and steaming feet!

Well, all I can say about Klebang is that I saw the Malacca straights again. End of story.

Dinner was a fantastic event. Had satay celup at Restaurant Capital Satay at Jalan Bukit Cina. The place is so famous that we had to queque up outside the shop and on the dangerously narrow road, and we waited for 20 minutes. This is how you eat satay celup: There's a pot of boiling satay soup in the middle of the table which is kept boiling hot by the burner at the bottom on the table. The owner walks around filling up pots with his secret ingredients of nuts and spices. It's self service there so you need to get up and go choose what you want to eat from the open air fridge stocked with all sorts of raw food - prawns, clams, chicken pieces, beef, vegetables, meat and fish balls, fish cakes and all sorts are speared with satay sticks. Each stick of food is 50 cents and we aren't talking about sticks ladden with pieces of food; you're talking about sticks with miniscule portions of food. You get two small fish balls for 50 cents . All you need to do is dip your stick of food into this pot of satay soup thing in the middle of the table and let it boil. Wait 5 minutes and *ding* your dinner's ready! It's like Malaysian fondue! Funny thing was that the owner of the place kept piling our tray with huge prawns and yummy bamboo shell fish. Apparently, this is special treatment. They say that if they boss likes you, he'll pile your tray with the good stuff. Imagine, a huge tiger prawn for 50 cents only! I love the bamboo shell fish. THAT was yummy. Estella and Jaymee loved the prawn so much and in the end we had two huge tiger prawns each! The owner knew that we were out-of-towners - he later came to our table and distributed a few names cards each to us and asked us to come back soon! He was so nice!

So after that, with a full belly, I drove home.

^__^

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Bittersweet ending to a chapter

Lord, I'm gonna miss him so much and I know he will miss me too. He said so, with a touch of sadness and melancholy. We both knew... knew that something is about to change. I had one of those rare long phone conversations with Chuo Ren last night. I really miss talking to him and I didn't realized how much I have missed this connection we have the last three years that he wasn't here. Last night's phone conversation will be the last of its kind coz he's getting married soon, and things will irrevocably be changed. I fear that we will lose that easiness that we have with each other. He is the one person that I can tell everything to, be it work, theories on sociology, science, relationship, sex... anything, and he doesn't judge but love me for who I am. Where else in this world can you find anther friend like this? But now that he's getting married, things will be different despite my assurance to him that nothing will change.

Come Sunday, Chuo Ren will be married and he'll be based in the surgery of a New York hospital. He's flying back to the States after getting registered.

It'll probably be another 7 - 10 years before I see him again. Well, that's not true, coz he coming back next year for his wedding. But then, it won't be the same, so it might as well be that long before I see him again.

I wish him great happiness and contentment with his wife-to-be. I wish them both joy, and hope for me that one day I might find my soul mate too.

A sense of national pride

My sister and I sent our other sister to Sentral Station and on the way back we took a turning that led us to KL . Apparently the road back to the roundabout and the train station was blocked off.

Anyway, on our way back we passed Dataran Merdeka and what I saw there imbused me with a sense of national pride. I saw our Jalur Gemilang at full mast at the top of the huge flag pole, snapping regally away in the strong wind. It must have been the effects of the spotlights and the wind that made it look so regal up there so high out of our reach. There was this sense of amazement and pride when I saw our Malaysian flag, which must have easily been 30 feet high, snapping so cheerfully up there. It was awe I tell you, awe. An emotion that I've not felt in relation to my citizenship in a very long time.

I could not help but glance back from time to time as our car pulled away from the junction. I never knew we even had such a huge flag pole there, much less a 30 footer Jalur Gemilang!!

Wow, I'm becoming more aware of my connection to this mother land bit by bit. I wished I had a camera then. I would love to have you all see what I saw then, as it was a vision I hope that future generations will not forsake.

Party mood

Roger Sanchez rules!

Wow, I had a fantastic Saturday night at the DJ Thirst at Sepang F1 Circuit!. Roger Sanchez played and I was blown away. His music is just so danceable that you cannot stay still. Somehow your feet will twitch at first then, pretty soon, without you realising it, it's dancing to the beat on its own! *grin*

We went in late, nearly midnight, as some of us were late - got lost somewhere in Nilai. Not me, I knew how to get there. *GRIN*

Anyway, when we went in, Roger wasn't playing yet. Whoever was at the console was okay and we could dance to his music. But when Roger Sanchez came on, you could feel the air charge and fizzle with his infusion of trance and techno, salsa beats. It was goooood. I couldn't help but sway and jive to that mix! Haha, someone commented that we were like 'papan' when we got there initially, coz we weren't dancing straight away. Sure showed him that we can dance, and we dance well. *ahem* Hee hee.

As usual, we were enjoying ourselves dancing, Estella and me. But poor Jaymee looked lost. She didn't enjoy herself that night, just not her kind of music. My colleague though seemed to have enjoyed himself. He said that he hasn't been to one of these things in ages on the account of old age. Well, looks like he caught up with it all last night! *grin*


It was a good night, but it was unsatisfying as we had to leave early! Coz someone had a migraine and we daren't let him drive back alone with something as bad as a migraine. It's no joke when you have a migraine. It's darn painful as you all know. Wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. Well, that's not true. I would too. Mean!

Since we were unsatisfied with it and the party mood was still upon us, Estella and I decided to spend Sunday having an expensive brunch plus maybe dancing later. We ended up at Starhill the tapas place and we saw Dr. Mahathir with one of his nieces having a drink there as well! He looks old. I wish he weren't. He was a good leader.

Later we wondered around Starhill and we were drawn to this very nice jazzy music coming from somewhere above. We just aimlessly strolled and chatted. Suddenly we realised that the music was near. We went to the balcony and looked down. There they were, the quartet, on another level below us. There was a pianist, flute, drummer and a cellist. The music was so soothing. We lingered and fell quiet and just enjoyed the music. Suddenly, I noticed that the drummer was cute and he was looking up at us and smiling. We smiled back. Throughout the half and hour, he would look up and smile at us. In the end, they finished the gig and I looked at him, caught his eye and silently applauded him. He inclined his head in acknowledgement. He then did totally unexpected - he motioned for us to come down and go for a drink. I looked at Estella and she looked at me for a moment, then both of us nodded.

We strolled down and as we were approaching the band, the cute drummer and pianist were walking towards us with smiles.

They reached us and we shook hands and introduced ourselves. Funny thing was that their body language indicated that they were drawing themselves away, that the offer for a drink never existed, so naturally Estella and I did the same and we said,

Us : Well, thank you for the music and someday we might come hear you again.
Them: We are playing in Shiouk in a bit, why don't you come listen?
Us : Really? You play downstairs as well? Wow, maybe we might just.
Them: Going anywhere tonight?
Us : Yeah, later we might go dancing.
Them: Oh? Where?
Us : Dunno, somewhere latin.
Them: There's a latin bar in Westin called Qbar.
Us : Yeah, we know. We might go there then.
Them: Okay, we'll look for you later.
Us : Sure. See ya.
Them: Bye.

We must have looked prettier from downstairs.