SRVNT

This was something unique I saw at Riuh the other day. A company call SRVNT - a hip spelling for "servant" - was doing their brand of dakwah through awesome design work. They basically came up with contemporary T-shirts and posters, all depicting Islam in the way the young can connect.

In the age where social media is the way to communicate, why not use your talent for dakwah in unconventional ways. I didn't quite catch the name of the person manning the stall but I was impressed on how he went about explaining his concept and products.

Details and contactsIt may be best to see what they had to offer via Instagram. They were still a small company and were still developing their products. They had a great concept and was trying to scale up. It would be challenging but if they did it right, they would own the space. Not many hipster Moslem preachers around the last time I checked. Yes, there were a few pretenders around for sure.

I would suggest you follow their instagram or Facebook, go and visit their stall the next time they open shop to learn a bit more about what they were all about. All the best brader!

Return to Riuh

It looks like the APW at Jalan Riong had taken off as a site to chill at during weekends. And one weekend a month, a party was added to the place where pop up stories were opened as well as shows and exhibits to complement the already swanky cafés they had there.

This monthly event was called Riuh and aptly describe the party atmosphere it generates. Since it was near my place, plus it was a post-call afternoon, I decided to hang there for an hour having coffee and checking out what was going on.

The battle planUnfortunately, I was late and most of the food were gone by then ...Decided to give this one a miss this tripA few stalls caught my eyes as well as some nice food. I decided for a simple coffee this time around and just let the minute pass by. Plenty of folks were there, young families as well as the hipsters. Everybody seemed to be mingling there happily.

Back indoors where the stalls were locatedSome really great work here on displayArea for children to have funEven Doof were aroundI wasn't really in the mood to shopWhile I was there, a group of young capoeira practitioners came to do an exhibition. Quite exhilarating actually. With the weather being nice, I actually quite enjoyed the spectacle. Shame that the parking arrangement remained a pain. I decided to park half a kilometer away to avoid the congestion. Something the organizer needed to look into.

Wanna try durian in public?Saving the dates for the next instalment Back to stall area where I sat to have some coffeeSpace for kids to run aroundTaking a breather with some ice mochaI would definitely be stopping by in the future events there. Even maybe woukd.make a point to just stop there on Sunday afternoons. The coffee was certainly nice enough.

New Look IKANO

When I first returned from the UK, one of the first mall I went to visit was Ikano Power Centre. It was brand new back then. Just opened. The mall opposite, The Curve have yet to be opened. IKEA was only just being planned.

It was a stand alone mall but with Harvey Norman and other anchor tenants, they were doing well. They also had a very good food court on the top floor - which has since been replaced with Toys'r'Us. Since it was by the highway - NKVE and LDP was not that busy back then - getting there and back was convenient. Parking spaces were also aplenty.

Inside the new flagship Harvey-Norman store

Over the years they had many changes but none were as drastic as from the beginning of the year. The mall had been closed for a good part of a year now and was just reopened before Xmas. A major departure from what it used to look like.

Now, Harvey Norman expanded to a couple of floors. The whole of lower ground on one side was occupied by Ben' groceries shop. Cold Storage had moved out. The place also looked cleaner and brighter.

The many eateries on the lower ground floor remained opened, and on the evening that we went to visit, it was packed. Looked like it was a change for the better ...

Gone GoPro

I finally succumbed. The final straw was when one of my nurses brought her little GoPro along at one of the ward lunches. I had to give that a look.

GoPro had a bad Xmas. Their sales were not doing very well. They announced that they were closing their drone arm - which I thought they were doing very well at until I read about the technical issues they were having. They were now looking for a buyer for the company and the prices of their cameras were being slashed.

I managed to get a decent deal and bought the Hero 6 Black, just in time for our Singapore trip. I planned to take only small cameras for the trip - which would likely mean the GR II and the GoPro. Too much hassle to carry the Sony or Fuji as time would be limited and were planning to fly and travel light.

So far, I had only had the chance to use the camera around the house. The photos and videos were much better than our old GoPro. I fact I was stunned by how good the stills were. The control were neater and having a dedicated touch screen and GPS were definitely bonus.

Some of the earliest photos from the GoProNext, I would like to see how well the snaps transfer onto the phone apps. That would make sharing that much more straight forward. The trip this weekend should allow me to do some field test with the camera.

This was BB Plaza

I was staggered to see the old BB Plaza now in rubbles. No sign of any work on the new building yet but I was sure that would be coming. The last time I entered that mall was almost 3 years back.

During last Saturday's outing, I was led from Pavilion to Low Yat Plaza. On the way back I went towards Jalan Bukit Bintang instead of walking through Sungei Wang Plaza. I could see empty walls behind the zinc plates they used to block the construction area. It was surreal.

The zinc partition into the work areaI thought that the new building would be built at the same time as the MRT as to minimise disruption. But then again, this is Malaysia. I would expect more traffic jam in the near future while the new construction took shape. These things should have been planned properly, but no point having a headache about that.

So, no BB Plaza. No Ampang Park. Time to move forward.