End of July 2016

Reached another milestone for my runs. 5K in less than 30min, but the fast pace really killed my legs after that. I have a long way of training to go still. Dude says champ runs at 4min/km pace and totaled 120minutes in marathon. Talk about gap of leaderboard guys and regular running. Still the training goes on.

Shot of stadium in the evening sun, pretty marvelous. Hamster circuit for the 5K run.

These pretties bloom and withers pretty quickly.

It's a nice weekend run @ BTHO Lake valley. Hope to do more of this.

Work still goes on BAU. Not sure what will happen at the end of year ,as Mr PlacingHat still remembers i wanted to have more project oriented roles. If that happens, my running habits will be broken again. :(

Thanks for the incentives and hopeful gains supposedly incoming, appreciate these gains. 

Android game - Growcastle

image via googleplay

Here is one game that will let you play offline, pretty rare nowadays. Simple tower defense game that gives you option to upgrade archers & special characters on the fort. The game don't really have much objective - defend, collect gold, move on to next wave. Every 5 wave brings a boss at the end of wave. Pretty fun while it, but might get old after a while, depending on your tolerance for grinding.

Someone hit wave 6.5k+ and above already on reddit. 

Here is a general tip from my experience.

Get on the bonus gold stuff, trophy , items with gold bonus. Build up your colony fast for passive income & keep the game running for passive income. This way you will hardly get overrun by running waves too fast.

Use summon stone items, these summons last till end of each wave and don't need user to trigger start of each wave.

With latest update, you get 3 setups, one for passive income generation , one setup for normal wave and one full offensive setup for colony conquest. Other than colony conquest, i don't see much objective in the game. CP points now got replaced with crystals, and crystals can be used to skip wave. 

Goffy looking moster boss just to add to the fun - image via googleplay

So what i do now is keep repeating boss levels for scrolls to upgrade colony income and use crystal to move 20 wave at a time. Crystals become quite useless once all your fort characters get upgraded. 

Check out google play link to download.

A lot to read on reddit if you are into this sort of stuff =)

Happy grinding people =)

Kin Kin Pan Mee @ Pandan Indah

image via foursquare

To me still the best pan mee i had so far in KL and Selangor. None has still beaten this stall, price is a bit high @ RM7.50 per bowl , but if you are crazy bout pan mee with it's fiery dry chili paste then you won't go wrong here. The Pandan Indah branch is the newer branch away from city area which i kind of prefer as it's more clean & new. Taste-wise seems like the same on both branches. 

GPS location: 3.127998,101.750954

Coming in from MRR2 Jalan Ampang side, don't turn into Pandan Indah on the main junction. Keep going & keep left, on the next junction turn left. That brings you to the road with Steven's corner on your left hand side. swing to right side of lane and turn right at the next traffic light. This place is hard to miss, being opposite Pandan Indah poice station.

The only thing i dislike is parking attendant being the opportunist to collect RM2-3 from your for your short meal time.

On this visit (last Saturday), i found that if you park on the right hand side block of this pic, behind row the attendants don't come to hassle you. So try out yourself & let me know haha.

Unfortunately, this is non-halal food. 

Forgot to take a shot before i add the chili paste. The secret weapon of Kin kin pan mee shop accompanied by daun manis + egg soup & a perfectly poached egg ,runny inside. 

Believe me when i say that when you mix all the ingredients together, it produces a very smooth and heavenly taste and spiciness that always tempt me for second serving. Thinking of this makes me wanna drool again. Just beware that the chili is on the spicier side of the scale, so you have been forewarned!

Can't resist adding spoonful after another of chilli. Will be burning hot but taste heavenly (don't sense eh?)

Had tasted super kitchen pan mee, which seems to be Kin kin's rival in pan mee business but the chilli really disappoints me and pales in comparison. Don't pass the chance to try the arguably best chili pan mee in my opinion in KL especially if you love spicy food.

Zhang Fei now works for IT

Economy very bad, so even Zhang Fei also need switch field to IT.

source

so things didn't go smoothly these 2 days. we had to wait & see what happens next.
life goes on i guess. see even the mighty Zhangfei have to be your IT consultant LOL

sorry on the pun. click wiki link to read more about Zhangfei & RTK. It's been my favourite since primary times despite it being half fiction from the looks of its source.

Dem buzy dem buzy July

got into my first presales participation as a PM. not really a pleasant experience..they gave me hell, the sales and product guys. being pushed damn hard to produce slides with no proper documents and some verbal info. in the end the technical review which precedes our delivery review changed their timeline all of sudden. this is absurd. perhaps the sales guys are one part angel and one part devil. bring in sales , keep the company rolling but handover unrealistic delivery to project team. 

i ask, how can they just change shipment date from 6 week to 3 week. logistic expert says its not possible and there is also custom clearance dependency. from such a layman perspective (cause i have no experience in what they are selling) already so much questions and doubt. how can hardware installation be finished before design stage is done? its not even finish-finish dependency if you talk about timeline. really give up...close one eye or perhaps two. i'm quite sure im not the one delivering this sort of project, not in the short time at the moment. 

Mr N still remembers our conversation, what if i told him i don't wanna go to other project anymore? let's figure out at end of year. he offered me to go to Psatu and i hesitated and never replied. never hear anything good yet from this project LOL. let's see what happens next. to very next thing i look forward to....1nc3rmt hope this is as what lalat told me :) 

apart from this, we are giong thur another important phase of life...3rd one coming

Kam Wan White Coffee @ Ipoh aka Mushroom/Ipoh Garden

After 4 hours crawl on NS highway on a post Raya balik from balik kampung on last Saturday, we pulled over from Ipoh toll for dinner. Quick call to wifey's friend and her recommendation is to the Mushroom Garden aka Ipoh Garden/Kam Wan hawker. It's opposite Hospital Fatima, a huge landmark that's hard to miss.

GPS location: 4.6104115,101.1070787

Coming in from the NS highway direction, Jusco Ipoh is on your right keep going towards Fatima Hospital. Once you spot public bank on your left turn in & you can find the hawker center a row of shoplots in the vicinity.

Parking space opposite the hawker center is quite convenient. If we take the table on left side of picture below, we actually get clear sight of the carpark opposite, really pleasant to have haha. Convenient to watch over our car parked there while being seated since we have some stuff from home inside the car.

Already packed to brim ~7+ pm. This looks like a good place to grab a bite for travelling people & locals alike.

Quickly spotted is the long persisting queue at this pandan rice ala nasi lemak style stall. So my choice this round will be here.

Close up of the finishing fried chicken. Hot pick of all time.

This looks good too, fried mantis prawn.

The seller in action.

Total damage of RM6.80 for pandan rice, the very last piece of fried chicken by the time its my turn to order accompanied with acar vege. Pretty pricey considering this is Ipoh yo. 

Taste i would say is pretty good with mixed curry and flavorful santan curry..still nothing to shout about considering the very long queue. It's safe to give this a pass if you are in a hurry. Would give credit to the good proportion of fried chicken served. In my opinion there are a LOT of places all over Malaysia, KL and Penang that offers similar standard nasi lemak style dish at similar price depending on where you are.

Some chinese style yam kuih i guess.

Other dishes we tried is the wet popiah (RM1 each roll) and lui cha with rice (RM4.50 each).

RM1 for the popiah is a good deal. Big popiah roll filled with vege and some crispy fried crunch albeit a bit too oily. Will be perfect if the fried crunch is drained properly. Wifey said the lui cha is good depsite it's pale presentation/appearance. It's located near the end where the hawker center's toilet is. 

Still a lot of things to try here. Will plan to drop by again next time to try em all.

Eid Mubarak 16' update-balik kampung-Autocity jalan2

Better late than never haha. Been busy holiday yo.

Morning shot @ Glomac hehe

Visited Mak Su & Pak Su for raya. It's been 3 years i since our last visit i think.

Kiddos playing outside their house.

Family dinner with everyone at Autocity's Nandos

Walk around autocity. The Lock bridge imitation here.

The 12 zodiac animals lantern there.

Nicely decorated place.

Even have places to play games & relax for family. RM10-15 per pax.

After raya jam back to KL was not so pleasant. 9 hours total damage.

MAIU Japanese restaurant @Bandar Mahkota Cheras

This is restaurant is easy to locate along the road in front of Jusco Mahkota Cheras. After some twist of fate (saman + redemption, well that's my code for myself) , we decided to come over here for a better dinner meal.

GPS location:  3.1099154,101.662124

I think some people prefer to take buffet meal, slowly enjoy their meal over the night.

Not my everyday value for money meal definitely.

Take a peek

And another here.

This is the tempura set. Comes with standard octopus and miso soup sides.

Deluxe fusion set..hmm..it's really soso only. Minus the steamed seafood egg. Eel must be really expensive, as i can barely see the 4 slices under the cucumber slices haha. The fried prawn is nothing special and i failed to appreciate the uniqueness of the cold noodle. Opps....its still decent, but at the pricing of RM48, this is one i will avoid in future. Adding to the injury is the lack of miso soup and octopus sides from this set.

This a good saba fish set. Very fresh fish.

Ah, finally the deluxe set is complete with arrival of its steamed egg. Oh, the octopus here is an imported side hehe, don't get confused ya.

Green tea ice cream topped with $hit (shaped) crushed red bean. This tastes good, but come at a hefty price of RM6 per scoop. Total damage incurred this time for four sets (grill salmon set is missing from photo) is RM156.xx. 

Cheeky girl posing for picture at age of 32 mth.

So this restaurant reminds me of only one good thing. Fresh fish and salmon, you can never go wrong if you love fresh fish. Whether we would make another visit here depends on budget i guess. If we are feeling like having a more luxury meal, then yes. Normally..uhm....i guess will pass ya.