I opted for the tiramisu as others looked ordinary.
First bite of the tiramisu made me cough lol... Coz of the cocoa powder. After that, it was all good. Not too sweet, so i likeds it. A huge difference from the Alexis tiramisu.
Wednesday 12 September 2012
Complementary cake at Starbucks
It is my birthday month, so with Starbucks Card, I get a complementary birthday cake! I get to choose any cake I want. There were five choices: Red Velvet, Chocolate cake, Marble Cheesecake, another cheesecake and tiramisu.
I opted for the tiramisu as others looked ordinary.
First bite of the tiramisu made me cough lol... Coz of the cocoa powder. After that, it was all good. Not too sweet, so i likeds it. A huge difference from the Alexis tiramisu.
I opted for the tiramisu as others looked ordinary.
First bite of the tiramisu made me cough lol... Coz of the cocoa powder. After that, it was all good. Not too sweet, so i likeds it. A huge difference from the Alexis tiramisu.
Tuesday 11 September 2012
Post
Ed writes: One of the many things I've come to love about Iceland is the architecture. The straight, simple design combined with the vibrant colors makes the perfect combination for me. Because of this affinity (perhaps obsession is a better word) a lot of my photos tend to contain random structures, mainly houses. I saw this lovely blue-green house with the deep red door and stair railings and blue posts as I approached from up the street and began pulling my camera out of my bag in anticipation of the picture I would instinctively take. To my surprise as I got closer, I noticed the equally colorful sock stuck to the post. It seemed to me to sum up my perception of the Icelandic people I'd encountered on my visit : very neat and put together but with a wry sense of humor when you spend the time to get a closer look.
Ed was born in Boston and has been a resident of Massachusetts his entire life. He's a programmer in an application development group for the health care industry. He's been reading Iceland Eyes for a while now, and sent me a link to his Flickr photo album of his most recent trip to Reykjavik via Twitter. I invited him to choose a few of his photos and be a guest photographer.
About discovering Iceland, Ed says:
The idea to make the trip in 1999 came about somewhat coincidentally over the preceding New Year's holiday. While at a holiday party, my hostess friend mentioned that her parents had visited Iceland earlier in the year and they raved about it. All I knew about Iceland up to that point was that the capital was Reykjavík, Reagan-Gorbachev something-something, and something to do with chess. It piqued my curiosity, however, as an interesting and exotic place to visit.
After his boss randomly mentioning a great package deal with Icelandair a short time later, Ed decided to make the trip happen, and three months later he was "geared up and mounted on our Icelandic horses for a nice afternoon ride in the mist."
On our first day we witnessed mist, rain, hail, snow, and sun. Then later that night we saw the sun set somewhere around 11:00 p.m., in early April. And with that (and the ensuing, unbelievably fun 3-night stay that followed) I was hooked on Iceland for good. The country is beautiful and the people are as friendly as ever. What's not to love? I finally returned again in June of 2012 and have just booked my third trip, along with a couple of friends who will be first-timers, for April 2013.
It's always fun hearing about how people got here for the first time, and often it's exactly this kind of seemingly random yet serendipitous situation. And most often our visitors, like Ed, can't wait to come back for more : )
To see a few more of Ed's photos with his wonderful descriptions, go to the Iceland Eyes Facebook Page. If you would like to share your own pics of our lovely island, just let me know ~ Maria Alva
Monday 10 September 2012
Las Vacas at Jalan Yap Kwan Seng
Las Vacas is a meat shop restaurant. When you enter the restaurant it feels like the raw meat section of a supermarket. The tables and chairs are all brown colour and wooden so its very Aussie like. The meat are from Australia. The restaurant is located along Jalan Yap Kwan Seng, next to Oldtown. It used to be Tony Roma's before this. I saw another Las Vacas branch at Mont Kiara.
My friend recommended me to try Las Vacas because I have been a bit burger crazy lately and so, why not try the burger at Las Vacas.
The cuisine in Las Vacas is Western. You will find normal western stuff like stirloin, beef, lamb shoulders, soup, salad etc. Maybe they are different than other Western restaurants because their meat is fresher.
For appetizers we had steak pie and mushroom soup. It was not too bad. But, still nothing to rave about.
For their burgers, I had a taste of the lamb burger and beef burger. Burgers comes with a side of fries. We had a choice of the size of burger patty we wanted. Size ranged from 150g to 500g. We ordered the 150g patty and it was really filling. The chef told us that there was a western customer who ordered a 500g burger and finished it!
Taste wise wasn't really that amazing. It did not have enough flavour in my opinion. The patties were not that juicy too. The lamb patty was quite oily till eating half the patty gives a 'jelak' aftertaste.... I needed a cup of tea to get rid of the taste. After that i was at BIG in publika and the sight of burgers was a turn off after those two burgers.
The portion of the burger is big. I should not have ordered their mushroom soup coz it definitely filled my tummy and left no room for all the burger.
We requested for the burgers to to cut into four. Sharing is recommended. It isn't very horrible, but it could be better.
We also had beef salad. We wanted grilled beef but it came as boiled beef. This was because all the waiters/waitress were foreigners. The one who took our order did not understand what we wanted. She was like ok ok can grill, but still came out boiled. We requested for the beef to be more brown, but the waitress told the chef that we wanted it more cooked. Then the chef, who is Malaysian, came to our table after our meal to chat and he told us what the waitress told him. He was shocked too coz if it was boiled more, the beed would be tasteless. The salad was tasteless actually. When we were served the salad, we asked the waitress if we should toss the salad to eat since it was tasteless, and she walked away and brought us an extra fork and spoon *really facepalm*
It cost about rm110 for two mushroom soups, one lamb burger, one beef burger, one beef salad and two steak pies and a slice of chocolate cake.
My friend recommended me to try Las Vacas because I have been a bit burger crazy lately and so, why not try the burger at Las Vacas.
The cuisine in Las Vacas is Western. You will find normal western stuff like stirloin, beef, lamb shoulders, soup, salad etc. Maybe they are different than other Western restaurants because their meat is fresher.
For appetizers we had steak pie and mushroom soup. It was not too bad. But, still nothing to rave about.
For their burgers, I had a taste of the lamb burger and beef burger. Burgers comes with a side of fries. We had a choice of the size of burger patty we wanted. Size ranged from 150g to 500g. We ordered the 150g patty and it was really filling. The chef told us that there was a western customer who ordered a 500g burger and finished it!
We requested for the burgers to to cut into four. Sharing is recommended. It isn't very horrible, but it could be better.
It cost about rm110 for two mushroom soups, one lamb burger, one beef burger, one beef salad and two steak pies and a slice of chocolate cake.
Friday 7 September 2012
Phone stalker
In Malaysia, if someone is stalking you on the phone, and if you are using an iphone, you are not allowed to block that user, evebthough you know the number. If you are using an android, you can block that user.
Making a police report is useless because the police will tell you they cannot do anything since it is not life threatening.
Making a complain to your telephone company will not really solve your problem if you are using an iphone. The only solution recommended by them is to change your number.
Making a police report is useless because the police will tell you they cannot do anything since it is not life threatening.
Making a complain to your telephone company will not really solve your problem if you are using an iphone. The only solution recommended by them is to change your number.
More WikiWeirdness
I asked in my last blog, what has happened to Wikileaks? Here is an organisation that once regularly broke headline news, which has more recently descended on its Twitter feed to the language of conspiracy thrillers, a slur campaign against Sweden, retweeting George Galloway's controversial views on rape, and waging a personal attack on the lawyer and journalist David Allen Green.
Since that post David Allen Green published another piece on the legal mythology of Assange's extradition and was promptly blocked by the Wikileaks Twitter account. A quick reminder of how -ever so slightly- ironic this is given that Wikleaks states that its aims are:
Curioser and Curioser, said Alice
Last night the Wikileaks account published a tweet, which (if you read it properly) states that it is an archive news item from the BBC website. It refers to the time during which the Swedish authorities briefly dropped charges against Assange, before reinstating them. The problem is that many people apparently missed the word "archive" and assumed this was a current story.
This story is however over two years old and is therefore not "news" in any sense. It is out of date, because Assange is of course once again a rape suspect. Having exhausted his legal remedies in the UK, he has now also jumped bail and is liable for arrest on that count too. Note the context of the tweet: this was not a series of archive pieces: it was positioned between current items.
Wikileaks has 1,621,031 followers at the time of writing. The story was clicked on enough times to launch it to the most read stories on the BBC - which of course then led general users of the BBC News site, who are unaware of the tweet, to click on the story. This looked like news: and big news no less: "Wikileaks rape warrant cancelled". It in fact made it to the most read story on the BBC site at 5am this morning. By the time of this screen shot it has dropped, but only to position 2.
When I tweeted about this today I had a rash of responses from followers who said that they had entirely missed the "21 August 2010" on the top left of the BBC page. Plenty thought this had just happened, which I rather suspect was the intention of the original Wikileaks tweet. I am not able to verify it, but have also been told the Wikileaks Facebook page also contained a link that did not have the word "archive" on it. It was later replaced with the Twitter link with the word included.
Manipulative, Misleading, Attention Seeking
So what to make of all this? It is hard to understand what Wikileaks was seeking to achieve by posting this out of date story in this way, given it was not part of a chronology or linked to anything else. It strikes me personally as being manipulative, misleading and attention seeking. I definitely am not prepared to naively dismiss it as "innocent". If, as widely believed, Assange is himself behind the Wikileaks account now, it comes across to me as mildly deranged and certainly the act of someone who is desperate to remain in the intoxicating limelight of media attention. Was it a test to see how powerful the account is in getting people's attention and pushing stories up the BBC website list? Who knows.
The tweet certainly did achieve the aim of getting the (now, non-) story back up in people's minds. Bravo for that. However it has at the same time further lowered my opinion of an organisation now apparently not concerned about much other than being a mouthpiece for defending its founder against personal allegations against him. It has also taken a lot people for fools, something that might well come back to bite the writer of the tweet.
Since that post David Allen Green published another piece on the legal mythology of Assange's extradition and was promptly blocked by the Wikileaks Twitter account. A quick reminder of how -ever so slightly- ironic this is given that Wikleaks states that its aims are:
Curioser and Curioser, said Alice
Last night the Wikileaks account published a tweet, which (if you read it properly) states that it is an archive news item from the BBC website. It refers to the time during which the Swedish authorities briefly dropped charges against Assange, before reinstating them. The problem is that many people apparently missed the word "archive" and assumed this was a current story.
This story is however over two years old and is therefore not "news" in any sense. It is out of date, because Assange is of course once again a rape suspect. Having exhausted his legal remedies in the UK, he has now also jumped bail and is liable for arrest on that count too. Note the context of the tweet: this was not a series of archive pieces: it was positioned between current items.
Wikileaks has 1,621,031 followers at the time of writing. The story was clicked on enough times to launch it to the most read stories on the BBC - which of course then led general users of the BBC News site, who are unaware of the tweet, to click on the story. This looked like news: and big news no less: "Wikileaks rape warrant cancelled". It in fact made it to the most read story on the BBC site at 5am this morning. By the time of this screen shot it has dropped, but only to position 2.
When I tweeted about this today I had a rash of responses from followers who said that they had entirely missed the "21 August 2010" on the top left of the BBC page. Plenty thought this had just happened, which I rather suspect was the intention of the original Wikileaks tweet. I am not able to verify it, but have also been told the Wikileaks Facebook page also contained a link that did not have the word "archive" on it. It was later replaced with the Twitter link with the word included.
Manipulative, Misleading, Attention Seeking
So what to make of all this? It is hard to understand what Wikileaks was seeking to achieve by posting this out of date story in this way, given it was not part of a chronology or linked to anything else. It strikes me personally as being manipulative, misleading and attention seeking. I definitely am not prepared to naively dismiss it as "innocent". If, as widely believed, Assange is himself behind the Wikileaks account now, it comes across to me as mildly deranged and certainly the act of someone who is desperate to remain in the intoxicating limelight of media attention. Was it a test to see how powerful the account is in getting people's attention and pushing stories up the BBC website list? Who knows.
The tweet certainly did achieve the aim of getting the (now, non-) story back up in people's minds. Bravo for that. However it has at the same time further lowered my opinion of an organisation now apparently not concerned about much other than being a mouthpiece for defending its founder against personal allegations against him. It has also taken a lot people for fools, something that might well come back to bite the writer of the tweet.
Bruised
The one time i cannot bear to look at myself in the mirror. Ugly purple bruises!
Anyone can help me? Five days dy...
Anyone can help me? Five days dy...
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