Chung Wa Dae korean restaurant in Ampang

Couldn't decide what to have for dinner tonight so me and the wife decided to be adventurous and drive to Ampang and try a Korean restaurant I read about online.

The place was called Chung Wa Dae at One Ampang Avenue. Took me about half an hour of driving from PJ to get there. I took the longer route by using the DUKE highway and the MR2 but at least there was no jam.

After 30 minutes of driving and following my GPS, we finally got to the little korean town in Ampang. There were many Korean and Iranian shops in the area.

There was already a few people waiting for a table outside the restaurant, so at least that's a good sign that the place was popular. Even with so many competition along the same row of shops, theirs was the only restaurant with a long queue waiting outside. After 15 minutes of waiting we finally got our table.

Before we were shown to our table, the lady boss took our order. We decided on the RM88++ set of pork, grill eel and prawns.

The place was packed, the decor looks dated. It looks like they have been in business for many years and didn't have the time to refresh the decor.

There was a large LCD TV at the back which was playing a concert by PSY in Korea. I was totally distracted by the TV. I was watching the concert on TV and Gangnam Style came on. The crowd just went wild. The guy isn't very good looking but man... he's a really good entertainer. It looked like a fantastic concert.

Anyway, after 5 minutes, the condiments arrived. Here's some of the photos.

 This one is my favourite. It's cockles in spicy sauce. Not many Koreans restaurants in Malaysia have it.

 Some wierd Spring Onion salad with spicy dressing.

 The usual spicy sausage. This one has been soaking in the sauce too long, the sausage was too soft.

Another usual fare, fried anchovies.

 They had century eggs, this was something different.

 Potatoes, I like this.

 Some wierd tasteless jelly. There's spicy sauce on it but the jelly was tasteless. It was odd having dessert with chilies on it.

 This was the marinated grilled eel. It's the same style as how the Japanese do it.

 We had a small bean paste soup too. It was quite nice.

 

Our prawn. Only one wasn't fresh. The rest was nicely grilled.

I took some videos of the pork being grilled but taking forever to upload into here so I'll skip that. The pork wasn't marinated either so nothing to shout about.

We had another kimchi soup, it was more sour than I what I was expecting.

Overall, the bill came up to RM106 for 2 person. Not bad considering there was prawn and eel also.

Anyway, good meal but I probably won't drive to Ampang again for it.

shower galore

Today I when to Ace Hardware to buy a shower head. The hose on my old shower was all clogged up with calcium deposit; pebbles and gunk in it. I thought this is crap, since I was going to get a new hose, might as well get a new shower head too.

I thought I'll treat myself and get one of those rain shower heads. I've seen it before and it looked awesome. I stood at the shower head head section for a good 30 minutes as I couldn't decide. The most expensive shower head about RM220. I said it could massage me and it had LED lights that can change color... like what the heck, why would I want psychadelic lights while I'm showering?

I thought it about then I realized if showering is going to be so pleasurable, I'll just be wasting more water staying in the shower. So I skipped all the expensive shower heads and settled for one that was RM38. It had a similar rain design but was slightly smaller.

I was all excited and came back to test it and was dissapointed. The rain showers don't have the pressure like my old shower head. Thinking back, good thing I didn't buy the ones that were RM167 or the RM220 one.

Samurai The Last Warrior book review

Finally finished reading Samurai The Last Warrior by John Man. It's my first time reading a book by this author and I hated his writing style. Too much prose, too little facts. He waxes lyrical too much and goes on pages and pages emphasising on a single point. At many points of the book I felt like shouting "get on with it! I get the point already".

I've always wanted to know about the Last Samurai but this is definitely not the book to read if you want know about Saigo Takamori. Crap, wasted RM49.90 buying this book. I'll stay clear of this author from now on.

Plus this book totally ruined my idealized notion of what a samurai is. He veers of and starts talking about homosexuality in samurai culture. I won't say more except it was very Greek.

Night time haiku

I listen to the silence of the night,
But all I hear are my thoughts running,
Where do they run to and where do they take me?

Can't sleep at night

I've been sleeping really late lately. It's 3:19am and I'm still awake. Can't seem to wind down.

Then again, I also enjoy the peace and quiet at this hour. I get to think more.

I think about how 2012 is almost up and I'll be a year older. It seemed like it was only last year I was 20 and in college. Ah, those were good times.

Sometimes I wish I could go back to school again and not worry about anything else except studying and exams and writing papers.

I was more adventurous back then. I wonder where all that when?

Why I'm good at what I do

Feeling much better today. As I sit on my sofa I contemplate a lot of things.

I think about why I'm good at my job and came up with a list:

1. I like learning new technology.
In TV Production, it's a constantly evolving industry, new softwares, cameras and workflows are constantly launched. I love trying out all the new technology.

2. I know how visual grammar. It's the basics of putting visuals together to tell a story.

3. I'm a TV production Major and Film Studies Minor. That two combination really helps in my line of work. Learning the theories of film allows me to understand the rules in visual grammar better.

4. I have pretty good general knowledge. To enter my Major in uni, I remember they had a general knowledge test. Many failed on the first try, I passed. I love reading the news and keeping up with current affairs. My favourite news website is the BBC.

5. I took a variety of classes in uni, mostly in the arts and humanities like psychology, sociology, music history, philosophy, and a bunch of other wierd classes. I understand people a lot better.

6. I love reading about mythology. Each myth is a great story and knowing what makes a good story is important.

7. My problem solving skills are pretty good. I know how things work so I know how to find a workaround when something fails. Watching Mcgyver as a kid help inspire me to find solutions to problems.

8. I love experimenting with new things. I get a lot of satisfaction in knowing when something works.

Food poisoning

Told the doctor I had food poisoning. She asked me what I had. I said I think it was the Sirap Bandung that did it. She shook her head in dissapointment.

Stomach churning slightly middle of the night. Looks like it's a liquid diet for the next few days. Urgh.

diarrhea sirap bandung

Crap (literally). Ending a great weekend with diarrhea and sitting in the loo.

Remind me never to drink Sirap Bandung again. This always happens.

By the way, diarrhea is one word I can never spell right without looking it up in Google.

Jalan Pasar, Digital Mall and memories

Today was a pretty full day. I when Jalan Pasar to buy some stuff for my sister-in-law. I love Jalan Pasar but I don't go there so often as it's out of the way.

Parking is really hard if you're not familiar with the place, there's an open parking lot further down the street on an empty plot of land I park at. It's RM2 an hour.

I love looking at the electronics and stuff they have. Most of it looks like dodgy electronics, stuff I wouldn't trust to last long. Like these ovens I saw. I was looking at them and wondering what could go wrong and straight away a long list came to my head. My apartment could catch fire; I could get cancer from eating all the chemicals it could be leaking into my food; etc.

There are some gems in Jalan Pasar. If you're looking for CCTV related stuff, like cameras and DVR recorders, it's the place to shop. I'm also vary of getting mugged there. Lots of dodgy looking foreigners there.

Anyway, after Jalan Pasar I drove to the Digital Mall in PJ to buy a hard disk. Another of my favourite place to spend time. Parking here is easy as I always park in the multi-storey parking at the highest floor. The top floor is connected to the Digital Mall.

When I visit the Digital Mall, I always have a meal at the Medan Selera food court in the basement. Stall No. 30 has the best Hokkien Mee and Wah Tan Hor. The old couple who runs the stall have been running the stall for as long as I can remember. When I was in secondary school, sometimes I would eat with my friends there.

Memories make food taste different and I think that's why I think their noodles are the best. When I eat there, it reminds me of the times I was in secondary school.

Patched my tyre

Patched my tyre early this morning at my mechanic. Cost me RM10.

Now that I think about it, I probably gave the Shell attendant too much when I gave him RM50.

Anyway, I'm glad this is over. Hopefully the tyre would be okay. Worst case scenario is that it blows up while I'm driving high speed.

Screw in the tyre

WTF?! Screw in the tyre!?

That was my first reaction when I saw it.

I was driving home after work when someone signalled to me that there was something wrong with my car. When I reached my place, i looked around and realized my right back tyre was completely flat.

I waited till later in the evening when there was less traffic and then drove really slowly to the Shell station so I could see if I could pump some air into it again.

I drove like really really slooowly with my emergency lights on. When I finally reached it, i tried pumping my normal pressure (28) into the thing but nothing happened.

One of the Bangladeshi Shell attendant came over and he pressed the flat tyre button to pump and it immediately started filling up.

After we spun the tyre a few times, the attendant said he found the reason for my flat.

... And that's when I saw the damn screw. I was really pissed. Only a few days ago I serviced my car and did the balancing and allignment for my tyres. Now with this, even if I manage to patch the the tyre I still have to do it again.

Anywau, I got the guy to help change to my spare tyre. The wrench that came with the Proton BLM car kit was a piece of crap. The metal isn't hardened steel. When we tried to turn the nuts on the wheel, we stepped on the wrench to loosened the nuts. It wouldn't budge and we could see the wrench had bend and warped. Piece of crap.

Luckily the attendant had another wrench and finally changed the tyre. I gave the guy RM50 and he said it was a lot. I told him its either I hurt my back or he hurt his back. For me, RM50 was worth it.

Now I have to wait until tomorrow to visit the mechanic to find out what can be done.

Russian heroes

I was watching this Soviet parade, I think it's one of their October parade. It was in 1984, at the height of the cold war.

Some how it reminded me of Sean Connery in Hunt For The Red October.



For a Scot to play a Russian... now that's some pretty good acting.

Anyway, back to the parade. All though my life, I've only been exposed to western media where the Russians were always potrayed as the bad guy. In all the spy movies, it was always the British, American or even Hong Kong agent going against the russians.

So that made me thing, were the Russians really that bad? What good did they do for humanity during the cold war? If we didn't have the Russians to stop the Western powers, how would the world have been a different place?

Maybe Malaysia would have been very different.

Iphone 5 launch thoughts

Not impressed with the iphone 5. It doesn't have mind blowing features like the difference between iphone 3G and iphone 4.

The difference between iphone 4 and 5 is only incremental and won't push iphone 4 users like me to switch to iphone 5.

I'll probably wait until iphone 5S at least or skip the iphone 5 generation and wait for iphone 6.

Also, its going to take awhile before they jailbreak the A6 processor unlocked.

The battery on my iphone 4 is at its half life already, it last half a day only heavy use. If the battery dies on this iphone 4 of mine then maybe I'll consider getting a new phone.

Also, the samsung galaxy III seems interesting. A little too large for my pants pocket but its something different from the iphone.

I pretty much stopped playing games on my iphone 4 already since it drains the battery a lot. I use it more for the social networking; emails; and for work.

So if iPhone 5 has some specific features that help improve my productivity, i'll probably wait.

Menggerunkan

Today I had to make some cuts to an episode. Lembaga Penapisan Filem, LPF (The Film Censorship Board) in their report said:

Kaburkan paparan proses menindik telinga seorang lelaki yang agak menggerunkan dengan menggunakan sebatang besi.

Basically it was a scene of a guy getting his ears pierced with a metal spike. The the other scenes were a girl getting the back of her neck pierced and a guy showing of his tongue piercings. He had piercings in the shape of a pill in his tongue.

When we first edited it, I decided to put everything in anyway and see what LPF would say. I could just imagine the guy watching it and cringing when he saw the scenes. I love his choice of word "menggerunkan". In english it basically means cringe. So it's basically cringe inducing scenes.

In the end I just blurred the visuals and changed some.

LPF did however allow other scenes of tattoing and piercings. Mind you, this is rated U for Umum (for general viewing). So the standards for U has changed to something a bit more liberal over the years.

Recently we put pole dancing and Bah Kut Teh on air too. There were minor cuts by LPF but they were okay with the rest of the visuals. I have to comment LPF though because they have an open door policy. When ever I want to do a controversial topic, I will walk into their room and discuss with them what I want to shoot. They'll let me know their concerns and I'll find ways to work around it.

By the way, i checked on Google translate and menggerunkan translated to awesome. LOL!

Bad translation but I would to think those scenes were awesome too!

Rain at night

Its raining now. I love it when it rains at night. I love listening to the rain when I sleep.

Sometimes I like to look out the window and at the glow of the street lights below and see the rain falling in it. Very calming.

Its a nice feeling to be in bed under my comforter and feeling all snug and safe at home.

Media Prima open house

My company had an open house for the staff today. As usual, all the departments had a booth open with various food. This year's theme was food from all the states in Malaysia.

I headed straight for the kambing golek (roast lamb). It was dry and the meat wasn't marinated well.

I walked around for a bit and saw one of my Indian colleague dressed as an Iban warrior. He was wearing black skin tight boxers so it looked like he was butt naked... yeah, and that for me pretty much ended my visit to the booths.

Proton Saga BLM 30000KM service

This is the other thing that pissed me of today. It's a long story and it's right at the end.

Today, I had to wake up early to send my car for its 30,000KM service at the Proton Platinum Centre at Mutiara Damansara. My car has really low mileage, I drive about 10,000KM a year only so my car is 3 years old now and it's about 31K now.

My 20K KM service was done at a different mechanic, I wasn't really happy with the service so for the 30K KM service, I when back to Proton. I find that their mechanic was more knowledgeable about the car (duh, proton technicians... of course).

I had to take a cab back to my office at Sri Pentas and I tried hailing one down by the side of the road, I haven't done this in a long time and couldn't remember how to do it properly anymore. Do I raise my hand all the way? How do I know if the cab was slowing down for me or for the traffic light?

Anyway, after 5 minutes, this old proton saga with an Indian uncle and Indian passenger in front pulled up. I told him where I wanted to go and the first thing he said was, "actually, I'm on the way home but I'll give you a ride anyway". Well, don't do me any favours dude.

He was really chatty, asking me where I stayed, complaining about the traffic, etc. The whole time, I was just wondering who was the other dude sitting in the front seat. I just gave him one word answers as I didn't want to share any personal info with him just in case the two of them decided to rob me. One of the stories he told was about this customer that asked him to kept the change and was really generous everytime.

After a few minutes, I arrived at the office. The meter came up to RM6 plus. I didn't ask him to keep the change. I just thanked him and he said "God bless you"... okay.

Anyway, in the afternoon, I got a call from Proton to come collect my car. I had to walk all the way to 1 Utama to catch a cab back to the service center. While I was walking to the taxi stand, a car coming down the parking ramp suddenly braked and I had to jump back. I didn't realize there was a used bottle of juice behind me and I kicked it. It sprayed this grossed out liquid all over my right side of my leg.

I looked down at my pants and it was covered in ants from the juice and what looked like small bits of beehoon. I was thinking, "WTF, why the heck is there beehoon in the juice bottle?... and what the heck is that smell?!" It smelt like vomit. Gross. Then I imagined someone had puke into the bottle and now my leg smells like puke.

I ran to the cab so I could get my car and get home fast.

At the Proton service, I saw 2 colleagues there who were window shopping for a car. I dropped by to say hi and totally forgot about the crap on my leg, by then it had dried out already and wasn't feeling so icky. My colleague wasn't decided on whether he should get the car. I told him he should as Proton was a great brand now and the service was really good. That's why I'm sevicing my car there.

After that, we all left and when I was driving out, the stupid boom gate at the service center dropped down on my car. The thud was so loud, my add-on backview mirror dropped down. I came out of my car to check and luckily there was no damage. The guard said, this boom gate only allows one car at a time. I screwed the guard and said you should have told me that then instead of letting me drive through it. Since there was no damage on my car, I let it go.

That really pissed me of because just a few minutes ago I had all nice things to say about Proton, and now I'm pissed at their stupid boom gate.

I'm sitting here trying to rationalize things out now and thinking back... yeah, the service at Proton is still good but expensive. Full service including allignment came up to RM298. That included an oil and filter change. They also managed to fix the creaking sound in my car. Hated that sound.

Pasta and books

2 things pissed me of today. The first was a crappy lunch. I was walking around looking for somewhere to eat. Since I was going to get a book at the Popular bookshop in 1 Utama, I decided to try out Pizza Milano. I had their Pasta Marinara.

It looks nice when I took this picture. I thought, hey, for RM9 that's quite good. That was until I put my fork into it and lifted the pasta up. It was just dripping in water. I hate soggy pasta. It was gross, I could have cooked this at home with canned pasta sauce and done a better job.

Anyway, I when to buy this book at Popular.

I've been reading the writer's journal for a few days now online. The stories he told was quite interesting. 2 person on facebook recommended me to buy it. A few days ago, when I was in Popular, I was going to buy it but ended up buying this book instead.

I've been playing Samurai 2, The Fall of the Samurai a lot lately. It's about the Boshin Wars in Japan. It was about the same time the last Samurai, Saito lived. I thought the book was about him and was quite excited when I got it. When I when home to read it, I was very dissapointed. The first few chappters was very general about samurai culture. It was stuff I already knew about like Seppuku and how a katana is made.

Anyway, I got dissapointed and decided to go back to buy the book When I Was a Kid. I asked the sales assistant at the shop if they seen this book (I held up my phone with a picture of the book cover). The guy when around looking for it, in the end, it was near the entrance. I started flipping through it reading it, before I knew it, I had gone through 1/5 of the book already. I liked how the author started each comic panel with "When I was a Kid" and it reminded me of things I used to do as a kid too. So here's one story I'll share.

When I was a kid, I didn't have much money to buy books. After school, I would go to Jaya Supermarket and hang out at the MPH bookshop and just read random books of the bookshelf. One day, I had a really bad stomach ache and had to crouch down and squat on the floor next to a shelf. At the bottom shelf was a book series "Hitchiker's Guide To The Galaxy". It was so funny, I read most of it there and then and forgot about my stomach ache.

Anyway, as I was standing there, I was contemplating should I just finish reading this book here? I flipped to look at its price tag. Only RM34.90. That stupid samurai book was RM49.50. I'll just buy it and read it at home. I can afford stuff now I told myself. Plus, I enjoyed reading his journal, so I'll just assume I paid to read his journal and his book.

I when home and finished the book in less than an hour. Had a few good laughs in it which I think was worth the money.

If you read up to this point and if you're wondering, what is the other thing that pissed me of, it's going to be another posting.

Rain over the weekend

It's been raining over the weekend. When ever it rains on the weekend, it makes me feel nostalgic.

I've been reading this comic journal (I am Boey) by a writer. It's just a journal, mostly about mundane stuff about his life in Irvine, California. Someone from my facebook recommended I buy his book so I decided to check out his website first. I ended up reading his journal instead. I'm still at 2008 so a long to go still but I like what I've read so far.

I often wonder what my life would have been like if I had stayed in the US. Would I have been like him? Probably not but the I have no regrets coming home to Malaysia. Sure the politic sucks; inflation could have been better... but the point is not to regret the past. What has been decided then, I have to live with it.

I woke up today at noon and read more of the journal while listening to some sad Korean songs. Ever since my wife started watching Korean dramas, I've been listening to Korean songs. I don't speak Korean but their music style is very similar to American music style, just in a language I don't understand. The benefit of listening to music like that is I can be doing something and the music just fills in the silence in the background.

After reading it for awhile, it got quite depressing. I got into my car and decided to go for a drive to Jalan Pudu and look for noodles. At the back of my head I knew it would have been closed already as it was already 3:30PM. Driving in the rain and listening to Korean songs, I had a lot of time to think about stuff.

I thought about technology; my career; the book I've been reading (it's about samurai culture) and korean pop culture. Before I knew it, I was in front of the shop and it was closed. So I drove back all the way to PJ and found a shop that was opened.

Someone on my facebook messaged me and I commented I needed a hobby. I realize I don't have one if you don't count playing Samurai 2; reading my books and using social networks. Maybe I'll go back to origami. That could be quite fun but it takes a lot of patience.

Languages

Hola! I'm back! Decided to write again of the blue.

I forget sometimes me speaking Bahasa Malaysia (BM)* confuses people. The other day I called Proton to make an appointment to service my car and after trying to find an available date, the telephonist asked for my name. I said 'Ooi' and there was silence and she asked me to repeat, so I did and spelled it out for her. She laughed and said she thought I was Malay at first. I feigned a small laugh and hung up.

These days, I automatically speak BM to any Malay I meet even though they're speaking in perfect english to me. It's hard wired like that in my brain.

Not really sure how I picked up the language so well. Sure, working with mostly Malay colleagues is one reason but even before I started work people thought I sounded like a Malay when I spoke BM.

I remember coming back from the US for summer when I was a student there and my brother heard me speak BM. He said I spoke the language really well. This surpised me because I hardly spoke the language when I was in the US. I didn't have any Malay friends or opportunities to use the language.

I probably put it down to me mimicking the accents of the people I talk too. When I'm talking to an American in St. Cloud I find that I start speaking English in an accent. So when I speak to Malay I speak to them like a Malay.

Its interesting as I don't have to translate my thoughts from English to BM now. Some days I think in BM.

When I watch my niece trying to speak BM I see her pause to translate every word in her head and I smile. I probably was like that once too.

Besides my BM, my hokkien has somewhat improved too. My wife's family, especially my
mother-in-law speaks hokkien and I'm trying to communicate with her in Hokkien.

I find that I can order food from hawker stalls in hokkien now. Recently History channel aired the documentary 1941, The Fall of Penang. It had interviews mostly in Penang hokkien. I found that I was listening to the interviews instead of reading the subtitles.

There's something about Hokkien that makes it so funny. When I watch stuff on youtube that has been dubbed into hokkien it instantly sounds comical.

I'm still pretty bad with numbers and time. If someone tells me the bill amount, I take out a RM50 and hope it's large enough to cover the amount. If not and the cashier is still waiting, I take out another RM50. So far it's always worked. This only works of course if the cashier is honest as I have to rely in them to give me the correct change.

My cantonese is worst than my hokkien and I can barely understand mandarin.

Now I'm also picking up a few Korean words like Sarang (love), Oppa (uncle/brother or abang) and ne (yes). In case you're wondering, I already knew the meaning of the word Oppa before I heard the song Oppa Gangnam Style. A korean language lecturer explained it to me when I asked her what was the most popular word her students asked her to translate. In drama series, girlfriends will call their boyfriends Oppa. So when I heard the song Oppa Gangnam Style I knew it was some wierd parody song.

*note I call the language Bahasa Malaysia and not Bahasa Melayu. It's our national language and should be spoken by all Malaysians.