New Case?

Puan Anita had a morning off today and she went to catch Magika with an old schoolmate of hours. Apparently it was so hood, she was harping on it all afternoon. After her return, we headed out to KLCC. I wanted to get a Moleskine pad - the last one ran out of pages, and if you're interested, Kinokuniya was doing 20% discounts for October. I also wanted to browse for a case for my iPhone.

After about 10 minutes at the Machines - an Apple retailer - I went for a case by Mophie with an extra battery. It made the phone slightly bulkier but not by much. Minimal weight increase but double the juice. Unfortunately the case charges but failed to transfer the juice to my phone. I suspected one of the switches was faulty. Will gave to take it back to the shop tomorrow after work I guess.

We had dinner at Harrods. There was a crowd building outside the Philharmonic entrance when we left. They were waiting for the Sheila Majid concert. I'm sure it was a great one. Shame we can't go and see.

Update on Sunday, October 3, 2010 at 10:47PM by Haris Abdul Rahman

The Morphie case is now working perfectly! Woot!

Clips

Spent the morning editing out the video featuring one of my patients for a patient support group meet at Hospital Ampang later today. The whole process went well without any hiccups. Previously I was more versed with Final Cut Pro rather than iMovie. Clearly using the latest tweak made iMovie just as feature-laden as Final Cut, well at least to the amateurs like myself.

File transfer from my 7D was faster than I expected even though I shot the clips in 1080p. The main drawback was synchronising the audio. Final Cut definitely have more precision tools on board. Otherwise, transition, audio fading and lower-thirds went without a hitch. Exporting was also quite easy as everything was integrated in the iLife suite. I used iDVD for the final output and am now enjoying the output on screen.

Now I have to go through the clips I shot during the recent Raya trip.

Carnivall

After extending my stay in Sungai Petani and extra day with Julia joining us, we spent the day at a water park near Kelab Cinta Sayang, Carnivall. Yes, it was spelt with two Ls. It was a adventure park with two parts - a dry park called ‘Land of Excitement’ and the said water park - ‘Water of Excitement’, located next to each other. The water park represented a real value for money, with RM18 per adult entrance during weekdays - we were there on a Tuesday. It includes snacks and drinks - so remember to redeem them with your entrance ticket! A combined ticket will set you back RM30.

The main entranceOne of the side attractions at the entrance - Meteor ImpakLet’s see what’s on offer. There were a few separate area to the water park, but the one we played in was the children wading pool, complete with waterslides and fountains - great fun. There was also a deeper pool forming a canal around the smaller pools where children can stay on floats while the parents paddle away and push them around. Good stuff as well. There was also a bigger - adult-only I supposed - slide three stories tall. Didn’t get to try that one. Puan Anita wouldn’t let me.

The children - all five of them - Idlan, Irfan, Imran, Nana and Aliya spent about a couple of hours in and out of the pool, taking chips and drinks in between. It was great fun. The whole park was clean and well-maintained. The changing area was spacious and children friendly. They could do however with more food vendors as the queue for the free food was rather long, and it was not a particularly busy day. I wonder how they cope during peak times. Maybe they have more staffs on the day.

Imran and his Dad, Salleh, trying out the canal and flotsThe beachfrontFood time!The wading pool was children-friendly although I would advice supervision as there was no dedicated lifeguard at this particular area. There were plenty of seating areas in huts around the pools. On the day, there was also a clown going around entertaining children and organising water games for the teenagers. We will definitely head there again with the children the next time we go balik kampung in Sungai Petani.

Restoran Rebung

Photo with the owner, Chef IsmailIt was my Mum’s birthday yesterday. She wanted a nice Malay restaurant to have dinner at and after much pondering, Anita came up with the idea of booking a table at Restoran Rebung. The one owned by a celebrity chef, Chef Ismail and the Angkasawan, Muszaphar Shukor. The hotel is situated at a couple of bungalows at Lorong Maarof in Bangsar, just round the corner from Bangsar Village. Lorong Maarof actually run parallel to Jalan Maarof, so getting there was easy. The hard part was getting a parking spot as there was no designated parking area for the restaurant.

It was raining heavily and getting there was rather slow as Julia - my sister - was driving the other car with my Mum and her children. Got there around 8.30 in heavy rain. With the earlier booking, we were given a room - a nice comfortable one I must add.

We were lucky as the owner, Chef Ismail was on hand to look after us, and he was at his charming best. Spending some time chatting with my Mum - she is a big fan of his - singing Happy Birthday to her and we were looked after very well indeed. The restaurant does buffet in the evening, although we a la carte was also available - at least to my boys. And the spread was authentically Malay and tasted like home-cooked meals. Very nice indeed.

The restaurant was only half full, that being a Monday evening and with the heavy rain outside. The ambiance was simple but cozy and homely. The restaurant itself was a couple of converted single story bungalow houses. There were sets in the lawn I an open garden concept - that was where the buffet spread was, and indoor dining, with air conditioning. There were function rooms inside which can easily seat at least 80 patrons.

The pick of the food was the satay, with a gorgeous peanut sauce. The sambal tumis that I had was not bad either. There were nice selection of Malay kueh and the bubur kacang was the best I had ever tasted. If you want and authentic Malay buffet in a nice cozy restaurant, nice food and frindly hospitality, I would recommend Rebung, no doubt about it. And there was an incident as well.

Irfan being all excited meeting his cousin went on to vomit out his dinner right in the middle of the room. Far from being rude, the waiters just came in with the napkins and mops, showed us where the wash area was. We got Irfan cleaned up and by the time we got back to our table, everything was cleaned up. I did not even have to say anything but apologise. The Chef then came over, brought Irfan some drinks and asked if he was feeling OK. Irfan proceeded to gobble down more satay and up and running before we knew it!

After an hour or so, the rain had subsided and it was time to go. Chef came over with some pulut for my Mum’s birthday and obliged for some photos. The price was also very reasonable. And my Mum really enjoyed the dinner and the hospitality.

Restaurant Rebung Chef Ismail, No 4-2 Lorong Maarof, Bangsar Park, 59000 Kuala Lumpur (Landmark: Dataran Maybank). Tel: Tel: 03 22832119. For more information, head to http://www.rebung.com.my/

Padang Besar

The original plan was to head back to KL on Tuesday. However, Julia - my sister - and her family will arrive on Monday and it was rather rushed to head home without spending the day with her family. We then decided to head back on the Wednesday instead. While waiting for Julia to travel all the way up from Melaka, we decided to go up north to Padang Besar to do some shopping.

Padang Besar is a border town in Perlis, where one can get cheap knock-offs from Thailand. Everything from shoes, handbags, watches and football jerseys can be found there. Puan Anita wanted to look for some rugs and clothes. The journey up took just under two hours even though we made the mistake of following my Nokia GPS direction. It took us via some kampongs and Arau town. My auntie who was traveling on another slower car managed to catch up with us since our route were much slower. We arrived there around noon. Finding a parking spot was not straight forward however. After driving around for a good 15 minutes, we finally decided to park at the side of a road, and had to walk half a kilometer to the nearest bazaar.

I mainly just walked around since I did not plan to buy anything. We got some toys for the boys to keep them quiet while Anita and my Mum and Auntie went out to shop. Finally, even Anita was disappointed. It was not that there were nothing to buy, the problem was, the bazaar was full of shops which basically sell the same stuffs. All the knock-offs looked the same, at a same fixed price. There was no variety. But the place was jam packed. I was not sure what others were buying actually.

After a couple of hours, hungry, we decided to head home. We took a different route this time, driving towards Sintok, joining the PLUS Highway there. Sintok is where UUM campus is. The nearest town to the campus was Changloon, and we stopped there for a late lunch. We finally made it to Sungai Petani at around 5, before joining Julia and her family at my Aunt’s place later that evening.