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.

Rather Quiet

First day of school holidays today. As usual, the traffic going into work was predictably lighter than normal. That was great. Rather than spending almost 45 minutes in my journey into UMMC, it was only 25 minutes today. It would have been faster if it was not for AZRB still messing about with the fly-over on Jalan Duta leading into the new Istana Negara. It was supposed to be ready before the end of 2010. It was now close to June. It looked like it would take at least another couple of months before everything sorted out. But I digress.

The main Suria KLCC foyerMy boys running around the hallway at Alpha Angle. As I said, it was rather empty.Heading back home in the afternoon, I stopped at KLCC to deposit some cheques. I was expecting the crowd to be bigger there, but instead, it was surprisingly quiet. Later, when I went out to do the groceries, Jaya Jusco at Alpha Angle, it was quiet there as well. Maybe everybody took the opportunity to head back to kampung. This must be what KL was like back in the 80s. Traffic was much lighter, and the pace of life would have been much more manageable.

Stargate Universe Done

 I was finally done with Stargate Universe. I watch the series finale a couple of nights back. Yes, I do mean the series finale. The series was cancelled after a couple of seasons which was a mini tragedy for a sci-fi such as yours truly. I must say that at the beginning of the second season, the momentum was clearly lacking after a promising start.

Stargate Universe revolve around a group of military personnel and scientists marooned on a spaceship traveling in uncharted universe. Allegedly, it was persuing another ancient ship which was in front seeding Stargates along its path across the universe. The Scientise was led by a character played by Robert Carlyle, in Scottish accent and the military were led by a Colonel Young.

How do they get onto the ship? The Stargate Command was trying to dial an address on the ninth chevron on the Stargate, but it will quire a vast amount of energy, that is only available on a few planets. They found one but was not able to crack the code to dial the last chevron. Hence they came up with a brilliant idea of producing a puzzle computer game and a young gamer, an MIT drop-out managed to crack it. Cue Robert Carlyle and Colonel Young at the front door of the boy - called Eli Wallace - to tell him that he has cracked a code that no one else in the world had done so and he was shocked on a secret mission, traveling at light speed to the new planet to dial the co he has just cracked.

But nobody knows where the gate will open to in the other end. When the gate was opened, the planet was attacked by another foreign clan wanting the same thing. The planet was being destroyed and everyone at the facility had no choice but to jump into the unknown. The gate on the other end opened onboard the spaceship they were eventually marooned in. This was the beginning of the long journey back home. Unfortunately, the systems on the ship were written in an alien technology, needing further prodding, as well hit and misses.

Obviously, there were plenty of adventure along the way, as well as drama between the crew members. There were certainly a lot of promising subplots on offer, but unfortunately after a while the character arch became rather boring. By the time the series cancellation was announced, the story started to pick up again, which I was sure had plenty to do with using up the original idea they had in mind at the conception of the series.

As for the finale, it certainly created more question than it answered. The plot also allowed for the story to be further extended should the writer wished to do so. So far however, the series appeared to be already at an end ...... Sufficed to say, that everyone was still alive and they have not reached Earth yet.