Reading Material

I was forced to stay in tonight. I will be driving to Penang tomorrow to be with my parents and Aunt who would be flying off to Mecca. I planned to attend a talk with dinner at KL Sentral, but Anita felt that I should have a rest at home since I would be driving up tomorrow and back on Friday.

How thoughtful of her.

Irfan finishing his homework. Good boy!So, I was with the boys just now when they were slogging through their homework. After it was done, it was time for some reading. Guess what book Irfan picked up?

Good to know that at least he could help me just in case my brain needed protection ...

The Announcement

So, the alarm went off at 1 am, and I straight away jumped off the bed, hit the desktop and started opening the stream. Apple got their big announcement eh!

But the streaming connection was awful. I thought maybe it was the network. Got upstairs, flipped open my iPad and tried both wifi and LTE. Still the streaming was bad, and often connection stopped. On a couple of occasions, I got kicked out of Safari on the iPad.

And one more thing ....

Obviously too many people tuned in, and Apple just couldn't cope with that amount of people on at the same time.

Luckily the stream became steady just at the time Tim Cook announced the iPhone 6 - and obviously the 6 plus. Verdict? Definitely going to get one.

And then, the talk was about the Apple Pay, which I doubt going to hit our shores any time soon. I thought that was the end of that.

And then came the classic "one more thing" moment, a la Steve Jobs.

It was clear that Apple had invested great effort in their new class of products. As when the iPad was initially announced, there was a lot of skepticism. But the products needed to be experienced before one could make any conclusions. It looked promising, but judging from other wearables I have seen so far, it would require a leap of faith. And if any company were to implement such a thing, it could only be Apple.

It looked like I would be putting in an order for both the 6 plus and Apple Watch soon ....

And now, it was time to catch some sleep .... Good morning ....

You Little Teaser

As usual, I would check my email and clear the inbox first thing in the morning. Then came a quick browsing for any breaking news and the like. Then a quick look at Facebook and Flickr before shower. Since the Apple announcement would be tonight, I thought I just have a quick look on apple.com.

Oh you little teaser ...... iOS 8, new iPhone, wearables ...

Would definitely be up tonight watching the keynote. It would start at 1 am local time. Must make sure that the broadband was up to scratch ....

The Afternoon Walk

After doing my duty - of chauffeuring Puan Anita to meet her friends in town - I had some free time to spend with my camera. With the gorgeous weather and all, I thought I'd go to Pavilion. I get to do some street photography, and also to had a quick walk around Low Yat.

Not much to see as next week would be a big one in tech world. Motorola and Sony had made their announcements of new product earlier in the week. Next week would be Apple's turn, the rumoured iPhone 6, and maybe some wearable products. A much anticipated announcement since the original iPad.

What did I notice? The street vendors were peddling selfie sticks everywhere! Something expected I supposed. Kakiseni would be holding their street art exhibit next weekend, so around Pavilion, there was not much going on. Off to Low Yat then ....

Surface Pro 3 was finally released, but according to the vendors, the sales were pretty slow. It was either due to the price or buyers were waiting for the Apple announcement next week. Either way, it was not shifting. Neat product though, and as I mentioned, I would have snapped it if it was available with LTE option. But since it was carrying an Intel rather than Tegra chip, the chance for that would be pretty small. The vendor suggested using a dongle. But that would just reduce its portability. Once you've used an LTE tablet, there was no turning back.

The Merdeka spirit was still palpableI suspected that this had something to do with the lantern festivalThere was not much alternative when it comes to laptop with built-in LTE chip.

I wonder what it would be like a month from now, after we got the announcements out of the way ....

Anita's Birthday Lunch

Anita actually had two lunches yesterday, with two sets of friends. And I was only invited to one, as the other was with her girlfriends. I had to cope with being the chauffeur though.

For the lunch that I joined, it was at La La Chong, a familiar place we went to before. Great cooking, with almost fresh seafood - somehow it was not so fresh yesterday. Great company, and great crab ....

Started with the prizes first ....Hmmm .... What to order?Crunching the starters ....The place was surprisingly empty for a Sunday afternoon, so we got our food fast and got to enjoy some privacy. It started with exchanges of gifts, some chit chat before the food came over thick and fast.

We ordered a couple portions of crab, a couple of fish, some cockles and vegetables. I must say that I was impressed by the crispy mantis prawns. The sauce on the crab was to die for - and most probably would so judging by the amount of calories and fat we consumed.

The orders then started to line up. This was the mantis prawn. Gorgeous!The table was soon full .....The birthday girl wanted to try everything ....The killer dish. Quite literally. The fatty crab ....The steamed fish was another revelation. Rather than steamed in a broth, the fish this time around was dry, leaving just succulent flesh to be scrapped and enjoyed with some garlic sauce. The cockles were too bitter for my liking though, so I didn't take much of that.

The crab was best enjoyed with some fresh bun, straight from their oven. It complemented the sauce beautifully, and it was not a surprise that it finished in double quick time.

Then there was time for cakes ....Nice one to top things off .....As I mentioned, the crab was not as fresh as I would hope. Thankfully, the cooking was great, and the sauce really made the dishes work. But compared to the fresh seafood from Kuala Selangor, it lost out big time. But for city dwellers like us who couldn't make regular trip out of town, it was not a bad return. Definitely would recommend the place although the crab may set you back a few bob. And not to be had regularly if you wanted to take care of your arteries .....

How to get there? Rather tricky to be honest. I would recommend that you just punch in these coordinate - 3.124607, 101.607771 - into your GPS devices and just follow the directions. Roughly it was located behind Tropicana City Mall, in Damansara.