Mood: laaaazy
Reading: Wilma Now Most Intense Atlantic Storm Ever
Currently listening to: Tonight Tonight - Smashing Pumpkins
Quote of the day: "The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is inefficiency. An efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to liberty." - Eugene McCarthy

Shit lah, its been a pretty busy week at work and its kept me pretty busy for the most part for every night so far. That, and the super secret side project which i'm doing with Vikram. :p

Anyhow, quick weekend recap thingy time methinks...

Friday

Pretty quiet start to the week as always and it began, as it always does, with some time in the gym after work followed by dinner with Al, Sneexe, and Chen Hoe at the kopitiam in Hartamas and finally coffee, shisha, nasi lemak and lazy conversations at Alvin's place.

Ahhh... nice, relaxing Friday nights. I'm pretty sure that the fact that i can't recall anything particular in detail may be indicative of this (or at least my brain switching itself off for a while).

Still, given all this, routine may not necessarily be such a bad thing. :)

Saturday

Hectic day as usual. Tennis, dance class (sans teacher for the 6th week in a row), and French class.

And then... the dinner at Fondue House.

*sigh*

It was a shambles and i can put it all down to one reason - their service.

I mean, we get there at 8:30pm, order at 9pm, and the vast majority of us got our food at 10:30pm! Sure, no doubt the food itself was reasonably good (complaints of the fondue being 'too salty' aside - pfeh, tasted perfectly fine to me people), but - mein Gott - how the hell do you only bring the food for one out of three people at our table in a reasonable amount of time, lose everyone else's orders TWICE and then proceed to serve every other table around us whilst we slowly but surely starve to death???

Shit lah, even my iced chocolate took an hour to reach me!

And yes, its a crying shame to hear their sob stories about one chef and a waiter not being around and leaving them underhanded but THAT'S NOT MY GODDAMN PROBLEM - for the love of all that is (contextually) holy, i booked that table for 15 on WEDNESDAY.

Still, for what its worth - at least they were fairly (if not annoyingly) apologetic about it all and gave us a 20% discount in the end which, i suppose, counts for something.

Crap lah, i didn't even get to try out the chocolate fondue which, by many accounts, was the best thing they had - especially since it had a habit of arriving BEFORE our main courses.

So, yeah, final verdict: Food's pretty good but heaven help you if their service is just as bad as what we experienced... :(

The Backyard was a much better affair, with the owner of the place, Jerry, being nice enough to extend our booking to 11pm (for obvious reasons) on a very crowded Saturday night and even taking the time to swing by and chat to me about the reasons behind it. :)

Ok, truthfully, the crowd was a tad... erm... more 'mature' than i expected and i could hardly hear the music but i really liked the ambiance it evoked. Between the homegrown live bands, the pool tables, the lingering smell of tobacco, and that English/Aussie 'je ne sais quoi' pub feel to it i can truly say that evoked some fond memories of my nights out in Melbourne... *wistful sigh*

I don't know but its just cozy... Kick back with a beer and somehow the conversation flows easily enough from that point on (perhaps a little too easily in Ken's case right Huey Yee? *wink*).

I personally think its the lights. :p

Went for coffee again at Alvin's place after that and... yeah.

Right, other reviews of the night out can be found here:

Huey Yee

"Us lot ordered at 8.45pm� and the food came at fucking 10pm.

Yeah, baddddd service, ugh.

Some very grumpy and cranky rants from multiple people later, you can bet this place is not gonna get any good reviews from the fellowship of bloggers.

It�s btw, nothing like Max Brenners. Mehhhhhhh..." [Read more]

Joa Quim (Pics available)

"The restaurant this week was a real disappointment....
Many of us (myself ~especially~) were looking forward to a simple and delicious fondue dinner but the Fondue House only managed to provide us with:

Very very bad service - they missed half our orders, and a mind-numbing (close to) 2 hour wait for our food - with the added pain of seeing tables that came in much later than us get their food (AND finish it) before we were finally served.

Hours later, with our bellies grumbling (and Kwong Heng almost blowing his top - it's NOT a pretty sight, I assure you) we were finally served.... Usually, the rule of thumb is that the hungrier you are, the nicer the food will taste....

Well, you know what? - this place breaks all the rules..." [Read more]

Sunday

In a sudden change of routine we ended up going to the Star KTV lounge in BSC for a stint at karaoke and lunch at their buffet - all for RM12. I wasn't really into it this time around and for the most part sat there chain smoking like crazy (and even listening to my iPod) whilst the rest were singing a mind-numbing number of Boyz II Men and Chinese songs.

Ack.

Played badminton in the afternoon with Vik, Ken, Al, Jo and Sneexe, bummed around at home for the most part and then met them again for coffee with Leonard in the evening at the nearby Coffee Bean.

*sigh* Shoulda gone to the driving range lah... :(

Anyhow, the rest of my week so far has been pretty busy with the last two nights being near all-nighters. Monday was just... well... crap. Tuesday consisted of work and badminton in the evening (a HORRIBLE performance this time around - lost to Sneexe 15-13 and then to Vikram 15-2 *screams*).

Today was the most hectic day of all by FAR. Woke up and hit the ground running and then had to dash off during my lunch break to give an unpracticed salsa demo at my mother's line dancing group's get-together at the KLGCC (50 ladies and not another penis in sight!). Let's just say that the first part of the demo - where i taught them some basic salsa moves - went well enough... It all went kinda downhill though when i was trying to get to grips with an actual routine with my ma's friend Anna... *sob sob*

Lessons of the day:

1. When giving a demo practice with your partner the day before.
2. Get a partner who is DOCILE dammit and won't go off on her own accord without following your leads. *le sigh*
3. Try not to get blackmailed by your mother into doing such things ever again!

(4. Bring a change of clothes!)

Rushed back to work for a presentation to my boss, Vik, and Lyanna concerning our strategy. I've been putting off this presentation for the last 2-3 weeks since i HATE presentations... Don't get me wrong though, but the doc was written up two weeks ago and he STILL demanded the presentation. Anyhow, it ended up as a very fruitful two hour discussion and it went incredulously well thank you very much... :)

Still, two very busy weeks lie ahead.

Anyhow - on to more important things:

Sleep. Now.

Blog Post Of The Day

Women Are Crazy and Men Are A**holes [Mel]

"“Women are crazy. Simple as that,” said my Muse. I was defensive at first but still curious to see what he meant. The mood swings, the emotions, the suspicions, the ‘over-thinking’…Where does one begin? My temper was flaring and then I caught myself. We’re only crazy in the eyes of a man. And could you blame them? Would you expect them to understand what PMS does to your hormones? Or why we need 50 pairs of shoes – kept in almost-pristine condition in their colour coded boxes? They probably think we ask them to put the toilet seat down for conversation’s sake. And yes, sometimes when you men glance at other women, we think you’re cheating on us and you don’t love us and all you think about is sex.

And then we realize we’re just PMS-ing so we go out and buy a pair of shoes to make ourselves feel better and our men think we’ve gone crazy. It’s a vicious cycle, really."