Ming Palace

This was a favorite Chinese restaurant of Anita's family since she was young. As far as she can remember, this has been the spot. Anita's father was an army officer and they as a family used to live at MinDef nearby. The restaurant users to be the flagship of Ming Court Hotel. For the past 10 years or so, the hotel was taken over by the Corus Group and has been renamed accordingly. However, they still retained a couple of famous eatery there - The Ming Palace where we ate last night, and Kimuro, a Japanese restaurant who served a mean tappenyaki - shamed that I did not like tappenyaki, even thought I love Japanese food in general. I just probably prefer them raw maybe.

Last Monday was Idlan's seventh birthday, while Thursday was Mum-in-laws. It was her idea to have Chinese and the choice was obvious. Ming Palace it was.

The food there has been consistent for the last few years. The Peking Duck was excellent although we did not have it last night. The steam cod was heavenly, although expensive. The buttered prawn was not too bad either. In fact, the food were reasonable across the menu. We had soup to start things off, and for the last 10 years, I have been against shark fin soup, so I had some corn and crabmeat soup, which was a firm favourite. We ordered seven items amongst us last night, a variety of beef, chicken, prawns, vegetables and fish. The Kung pow beef was excellent, a new find for us.. Lemon chicken was good as well. The disappointment was the vegetables. The asparagus was rather overcooked. I did not taste the fish as we ordered steamed Latin last night, and I got this thing with fresh-water fish!

We had an excellent time. My brother-in-law was also present. We we're really too full to order any desserts. From what I know, the main attraction of the place was the excellent din sum lunch they offer. I have sampled them on a couple of occasions and the service was quick and friendly. In fact, the waiters and waitresses the knew Irfan and Idlan by now. In fact a few of them watched them grew up over the years, and remembered how t prepare their favourite Chinese Fried Rice.

I must confess that it was not the cheapest joint in town. In fact, do be careful if you were ordering for fish and you may be caught staring at the bill ........ Certainly for the business types, the private rooms offered privacy.

Corus Hotel is located along Jalan Ampang, opposite KLCC and right next to the now oh-so-quiet Avenue K. Ming Palace was located on the first floor of the hotel. The parking can be a pain as they charge you RM 10 per entry!

Neck Ache

It all started on Monday morning. It was not I was looking forward to another Monday, but life went on I supposed. I woke up in an awkward position in bed. Realised soon after that I had pulled a muscle on my left upper back and left side of the neck. I thought some stretching exercise while getting on with things might improve matter.

Unfortunately, by Monday afternoon, I can hardly turned my head, but painkiller helped. I did not go straight back home as I needed to drop by the bank that afternoon. My back seized up again as soon I reached home. Luckily Anita gave me a back rub, and again after some anti-inflammatory, it settled right down.

It however came back with a vengeance on Tuesday morning. Dragged myself to work, and being on call yesterday, I spend the day walking like a robot, having to turn with my whole body to look left and right. Quite funny actually, at the time. This morning, it stiffened up again when I woke up, so off I went on the painkiller again. It helped. Had another massage on reaching home this afternoon. It was so good that I felt asleep through Maghrib! Just woke up, on painkiller again! Let's hope it gets a bit better by tomorrow. I don't want the neck to be stiff when I travel to London next week.

Update on Thursday, June 2, 2011 at 4:32PM by Haris Abdul Rahman

The neck is much better today, although it ache a bit towards the end of the day. Time for some more massage I think ..... :)

Tango with the Mango

Tango Mango was one of the shops which should have had a sign at the front entrance. Not to advertise the place, but to serve as a warning. "Enter at your peril!". For the last couple of times I entered the place, both myself and Puan Anita ended up spending close to RM 500 on the stuffs there. Yes, we nearly did the same again today. Anita needed to buy some birthday gifts for her friends. She ended up buying some for herself as well.

I always go the for my Moleskine fix. It was one of those joint which was always well-stocked as far as Moleskine were concerned. There were a few other shops in town, Czip Lee and Kinokuniya among others who stock Moleskine, but almost always, I never got to buy the books I wanted. I ended up having to compromise or to come back on another day. Not here. I got my usual A5-sized plain pages, as well as a smaller one for my lab coat - that one was almost done. I ended up buying a couple of each. The next purchase was a fountain pen. The pen I was currently using courtesy of Idlan for my last birthday has ended up with a wobbly nib. I can hardly used it now. I have another fountain pen, but I didn't really like the nib. It was too narrow. I also have another, a Mont Blanc which I only save for the odd occasion.

I bought a Lamy. The broadest tip which I can find. And the one which have a valve and a tank, so that I did not have to spend on cartridges. Got my selection, and walked out happy. Anita was also impressed with her purchases. She bought a couple of recipe books as gifts. The ones which has slots for recipe cut outs from magazines and newspapers.

No. We we're not done yet. We found some Kalkitos here. You know, the transferable films from the 80s. I used to be crazy on those, and it was a surprise that it made a comeback.

So if you were looking for cute little gifts for birthday and other things, or fancy cards, wrap peers and stationaries, do give Tango Mango a visit. It was located on the first floor of The Curve in Mutiara Damansara. The Uncle behind the counter also does some fancy wrapping, although the service can be slow as the staffs there prefer to indulge their customer asking what they were looking for and were eager to help.

Echofon Galore

I’ll admit it, I was on call today and I had a bad back. So I couldn't walk around the ward to do the paperwork in Day Care. I would rather sit in front of my laptop, doing some reading as well as tweeting. So here I am, and the evening ward round would be another couple of hours, all drugged up with anti-inflammatories. The plan would be to have a quick bite, then Maghrib prayers, and start the rounds at around eight from Casualty.

I thought I would write about my current twitter clients, because I must say that I was really impressed with the current iteration of Echofon for Mac desktop - free as I downloaded the Lite version from the App Store and couldn’t really tell the difference with the USD 19.99 ‘heavy’ version. It all started when I started using the Echofon for iPhone and iPad last week. Beautiful, unobtrusive interphase and excellent push capabilities for the iPhone version, which can be muted at night so as not to chirp while you were sleeping. The same iPhone download also expands into a fully-fledged iPad client which was also excellent.

What I love about the iPhone app apart from the reliable push service - the previous I used was SimplyTweet with its rather dull interface - was how well it integrate with the photo clients, supporting most conventional photo uploading services. The conversation modes were also nice, as well as well as the DM page which turned the tweets into conversation panels. The location service was also reliable, and it latched on onto my GPS position very quickly, with options to turn it off of course. Another great feature was the fact it integrates both twitter RT service as well as manual RT with comment with the RT @ format. The “quote” RT system of the official twitter client drove me mad!

On the desktop client, I was also able to integrate my bit.ly client without any hiccups. The great features from the iOS program translate well onto the desktops, so you get almost the same format in terms of image integration and conversation. But there was an added feature. You can sync up the iOS and desktop clients, so that say if you have just used you iPhone client, the unread counter would reset to when your phone was switched off when you boot up the Mac desktop client. Clever I thought. Since I have only been using the clients for only a few days, it may still be too early to start jumping up and down raving about it. So, I shall write again after a couple of weeks.

P/S: I would be writing regular reviews on my tech website in the near future. My alter ego tech persona can be followed here, and the website is here.

Of Flooding

We often hear scary stories about flash flooding in the middle of KL town. Yes, it was getting less frequent with the advent of the SMART tunnel, but it was still an issue after heavy downpour. And one such downpour happened this morning.

Luckily the rain abated by 10 am. The main areas where it was still a problem was around Jalan Duta-Semantan intersection as well as Brickfields between KL Sentral and Bukit Persekutuan. I was caught at one of thses points before, and it was so bad that I would avoid these spots everytime it threatened to rain. And I must say the recurring theme at these places were constructions and road building. Bracing myself again this morning.