little miss may

Joining the princess appearl and winnliuliu on their FlyDay Foo-Logging (Food Blogging) and FORN, I want to share the jewel of a Malaysian restaurant I found a couple of months ago. Well ok, I didn’t find it, my friends (Malaysians, of course) introduced it to me. It’s new on the block, a small setup, and has the most memorable name of all — mamak.

You might say, “aiyaaaaa, mamak only mah…” but ohhh, it’s such a treasure for us! How Come™? Because it serves the best-est, freshest (and rather expensive), almost 100% authentic roti canai in the heart of Sydney city. A rare find! The queue is long during peak hours. And probably 50% of it’s patrons are Malaysians. No joke.

The first thing you might notice is that the chefs aren’t ‘black’, but Chinese. I don’t really care, they make pretty authentic roti and even though it takes about 20 minutes for them to get them to your table (the back-orders are huge), it’s still worth the wait.

A plain roti canai will set you back by $5.00, and a roti bom is $6.50. Compared to actual Malaysian mamak prices in RM, this is definitely daylight robbery! But… because I soooo miss my roti bom and can’t stay away from it… pay lor. What to do?

They also serve other favourites like nasi lemak (pretty darn good), fish curry (very darn good), chicken curry (very the yumyum good), mee goreng (not all that good), and maggi goreng (too wet to be good). They even have cendol for dessert, but the “green worms” are just too bright green and not fat enough, plus they tend to go easy on the gula melaka so you’d have to ask them for a top-up. And of course, all in Aussie prices, which to the locals, are actually quite reasonable for a good meal.

Despite feeling a wee bit poorer after a meal, I would definitely go back for more! Even my Aussie friends thought it a pretty nice place to dine. And yes, you’ll smell like the restaurant after you’ve finished, which is a sure sign that they’ve done it right.

Now all I have to do is teach them to douse the roti canai with half-boiled eggs and light soya sauce and pepper…

Perhaps some kari kambing…

The Mac is Back!

After 1 dreadful week using my office laptop to answer emails, surf blogs and poke people on FB, I’m finally back on familiar soil with the Forbidden Fruit. It’s such a relief to have my Mackie in my hands once again… *rains kisses on the white Apple logo*

Yup, heart transplant is over. Clean slate start. Unfortunately, since it was a total wipe-out, I did lose some applications that came pre-installed (and some, courtesy of Ah Tak’s Uncle Ho service) when I first bought the Mac. But as luck would have it, I found most of the installers backed up on my external hard drive, which took the pain out of downloading them from Uncle Joe again.

Another stroke of luck was that I had signed up for a .Mac trial a few days before the crash, and synced my Address Book and Bookmarks to my account. I didn’t even remember that I’d done that until I was fiddling around with my .Mac account yesterday, and whee! My addresses and bookmarks were back! And yes, all your blog URLs are there… *wink*

The only major thing that was wiped out and sooooooo irreplaceable were my emails. Those had gone to the bin for eternity, forever more. Ordinarily, since they were Gmail accounts, I could’ve retrieved them from Gmail’s server but unfortunately I had set them to ‘delete after download’, thus only the last 30 days were still in my trash can waiting to be disposed of. I fished those out, changed settings to ‘archive after download’, and hopefully I won’t have to cry over spilt milk again. I just miss those old mails — the good, the bad, and the ocipala — all gone… *sigh* What to do? Send me some emails to make my Inbox feel loved again, quick!

I now have a silver kotak like LB, but I’ll spare you its photo since all boxes look like the other, especially since they’re from the same factory. I’ve done my first full backup using Time Machine, and set it to backup every day. Never again shall I lose precious data!

So, what next?

Do some tag homework, of course!

The Age I Wish To Go Back To
Owning up to memes from Giddy Tiger, Doreen and Chen, who tagged me on the Age I Wish To Go Back To. Well, to be honest, I don’t have a particular age I’d like revisit. Maybe it’s because I’m too lazy to think of just one particular age — every year was so interesting in its own way. Can go back to every year ah?

However, since we’re on the subject of time travel, I wouldn’t mind going back to the day before my Mackie had a heart attack — that would be last Friday. If I could relive that day, I would’ve gone to the store, get my 1TB external HDD, and do that backup! Would’ve saved me lots of tears. And regrets. And moolah for that transplant.

And in all grand tradition, I shall tag;
Ah Boy
Liucas
Winn
Pink Cotton
kyh a.k.a. Brad

* * * Start copy * * *
Instructions: Title: The Age That I Wish To Go Back To
Requirement: Write about the one age that you wish to go back to and why?
Tag Mode: 5 bloggers
1st - You leave their blog and post link and add to the list below.
2nd - Let the blogger you want to tag know they had been tagged by commenting in their blog.

The Age that they Wish to Go Back to:
Amidrin wish to go back to Lemonjude wish to go back to age 6 to enjoy kid’s life.
Hui Sia wish to go back to age 16 to meet her first lover again.
Giddy Tiger wishes to go back to a childhood life with no worries in the world.
Rinnah wishes she could turn back time to the happiest days of her life.
Ehon doesn’t wanna go anywhere.
Chen wanna go back to age 19 to take a different pathway in life.
Mistipurple wanna go back to primary school but trusts God knows better.
Doreen wants to go back to her wedding day to relive the moment.
May wants to go back to the day before her Mackie’s heart attack.
* * * End copy * * *

Alas…

Mackie suffered a heart attack last Saturday evening.

It stopped beating.

Nothing could resuscitate it.

*sob*

*sigh…*

Mackie’s in hospital right now, undergoing operation for a heart transplant.

Be back in action soon.

Has it been a week already since my last post? Eek! Wherever did the time go? Thank you for the tags, the SMS-es, the dimsum and pokes on Facebook to make sure that I’m still alive and wriggling.

Between work, yoga and evening classes, feeding and keeping myself clean, shopping for necessities and collapsing into bed every night, I really didn’t have much left for anything else the last couple of weeks. No time to blog, or visit your blogs — my apologies. Whatever time I have left not doing the above, I either curl up on the sofa too tired and lazy to move, or feebly respond to all those challenges and invites on FB. And attempt to keep 1 week ahead of the TV’s airing of Heroes season 2, though I usually watch the downloads just 1 day before it shows here ‘cos I’d forget. Oh well, at least I try.

I’ll come around your blogs soon… See you there, ya?

Christmas is coming. I mean, it’s really coming! Decorations have been up at some of the shopping malls as early as 2-3 weeks ago. Shops are stuffed with chocolates and candy canes. I’ve taken a lovin’ to these gummies. Not quite in the shape of bears (do you see Santa’s face?), but very chewy and absolutely lovely to eat. I keep a jar on my office desk filled with these gummies, and ever so often someone would come up and ask, “Can I have a lolly?”

Yeah. That’s how I bribe them to do work.

Last weekend was glorious. My colleague has a couple of pugs, and she asked if I’d like to come along when she took her dogs out for a walk on Sunday. We went around Milsons Point and passed Luna Park, a small amusement centre right next to the Harbour bridge. Coco (the dark female) and Oscar (the lighter male) were absolute joy to be around, besides showering me with lots of doggy hair to shake off after that.

The weather’s back to cold this week, averaging at 18ºC during the day. Not raining cats and dogs, but some mice and hamsters at least. It’s a change from last week’s hot weather, but too bad it won’t stay this way. Summer is definitely creeping in according to the forecasts. Hopefully it’ll stop raining at the end of the month when I go camping, and when ehon is here. Oi, applied for leave already! Where go, what do?

Okay, before I bore you all to death with my lack of spicy gossip, let me leave you with a song by Amy Winehouse. A cover of the very old hit by the Teddy Bears ~ To Know Him is to Love Him. Reminded me of my childhood days when I would listen to all these oldies at my uncle’s house over the weekends, singing along with an old songbook in my lap.

Enjoy.