Braving the storm...

I'm speechless. How can this possibly be? I'm gonna say that I'm officially being stalked by hurricanes. Okay, okay, I should actually start telling this story from 2+ weeks ago.


August-26: Three "geniuses" decided together to spend the long Labour day weekend in New Orleans. Being Malaysians, the 3 "geniuses" is oblivious to the hurricane Gustav brewing just outside of the gulf.

August-28: "Geniuses" finally found out about the hurricane. After much consideration and sleeping over it, decided to go against the general consensus and head towards New Orleans the next morning.

August-29: "Geniuses" had a blast in New Orleans (will elaborate further on this vacation when in better mood) only to return to the hotel and found out that there's a mandatory evacuation order. The long weekend have to be cut short...very short.

August-30: Instead of having fun in N.O. with oysters and cocktails, "geniuses" are stuck in a 10+ hours traffic jam eating Oreos and drinking water!


2+ weeks down the road. "Geniuses" thought they dodged a bullet with Gustav and was complacent. Again it's a long weekend, this time nothing could go wrong as they decided to stay put and not go anywhere other than some dim sum and groceries, or so they thought...


Sept-11: Hmm... significant day. "Geniuses" got surprise email from company's info center, stating office building will be closed and staff dismissed earlier in view of the coming hurricane...Ike. "Geniuses" celebrated momentarily, till they realize the situation. The "genius" who wrote this blog, yours truly, started cursing his unbelievable luck and in frustration wrote this blog.


In any case, there should not be much to worry about as we're just expecting long power outages and windows being damaged by wind. With that in mind, this genius bought a whole lot of stuffs to party through the storm!


Storm party ingredients!

Update!: The worst is over for my area, no flooding..phew!...and God bless, all my windows are still intact. Just some minor leaking of water in the apartment.

Something old, something new...

I know it's kind of disorientating, reading something that happened 3 years ago followed by something recent. But, I guess that's how I work. So, please bear with me.

Sipping my cup of freshly brewed White Coffee all the way from Ipoh reminds me of the wonderful lifestyle of the Vietnamese. Well, that's not the only trigger. A bragging session ("chui sui") some time ago over a bowl of pho, brought back the memories of the short stint I had in Vietnam.



It was a short assignment in a very rural part of Vietnam. My first impression of this place is..."what happened to the chairs? why are they so short and small?". My camera was dead during that trip, therefore I have no pictures to prove this. However, if you get a chance to visit Vietnam, take note of their side walk cafe's which has numerous short chairs and tables facing the roads.

From my experience, the Vietnamese people are very social and cafe oriented. While I was there, almost every dinner was ended with a short trip to a nearby cafe. These cafes were almost always filled with people. Two drinks which I thoroughly enjoyed during these cafe sessions are the famous Vietnamese Coffee served with the interesting filtering apparatus on top of the cup and the "Sinh To", a mixed fruit milk shake.

The food was also a very interesting experience for me. From the MSG laden beef "pho", nicely grilled "Com Tum", mysteriously stuffed and marinated spring rolls to the seafood. It might not occur to you that 3-4 years ago Vietnamese restaurants are almost unheard of in KL. There was even once when we (so obviously, I'm not alone in this trip) were taken out for dinner by some locals. In a foreign land and with no understanding of the language, we left the ordering to them. A stew pot was served with some dark sauces and a few pieces of oddly shaped meat. We were curious about what kind of meat was being served. With limited English from the locals, they described the shape of the animal. The conversation goes something like this:

Local Guy : hmm... can eat one...don't worry.

Me/Friend : but... what is it? I am not going to eat without knowing.

Local Guy : I forget the word. The nose like rat one...

Me/Friend : what?! rat!!!!

Local Guy : no, no, no. Don't worry, not rat. Nose like rat, dark colour fur, but not rat. Wait, wait, ask boss and see got live one to show you or not.

Boss : Oh, sorry..no more... last one in your pot.

Me/Friend : ... ... ...

Local Guy : Don't worry, very nice one. Good for you!

Me/Friend : urm... really? Try describe the animal again please.

Local Guy : Ok ok, I phone home and ask my wife what it is called in English.
(after a short conversation in Vietnamese over the phone...)

Local Guy : Fox! It is a fox.

Me/Friend : Oh... I think I get it now. Same like chinese wild animal dishes, it should be a civet cat ("guo zi lei"). Phew...


The town where I stayed during my visit.


A sample of the mysterious street food of Vietnam.


Humongous prawns at a restaurant by a river. Notice the whole chili and raw vegetables on the table.
They are condiments for whatever that's served.


Rice crackers to go with beer!


The 3 Malaysians with a Vietnamese in an ancient house in Historical City Hoi An.

Welcome Home or Farewell?

A month ago, I was back in the land of shredded chicken broad noodles (kai si hor fun), penang laksa, nasi lemak and roti canai for a short home trip. A moment very much look forward to for someone like me. Someone who has a multitude of love affairs with food.

A few colleagues got together for a small homecoming dinner at this nice restaurant in Pavillion KL. As usual, the mastermind of all outings among my colleagues, Kenneth initiated the event. The sms that came to me was to meet at "Tian Di" Restaurant. There I was searching hi and lo for this elusive restaurant. A short phone call later to get the relative location of this restaurant revealed that it was "Dain Ti Hill" instead... WTF! ... *moments of total silence*...

Anyway, we had some pretty simple dishes for the dinner. But the one which features tofu with salted egg yolk is very memorable. It is a dish made of simple ingredients yet has very rich contrasting tastes. The soft silky texture and .... urm...tastelessness? of tofu against the sandy texture and salty taste of egg yolk.





I particularly liked the way they serve the cocktail as well. In a beautiful vial surrounded by 6 conical tiny glasses over a bucket of ice. Sadly, due to very bad memory, I couldn't remember the name of the drink.



The highlight of this restaurant? It's the 50% discount for Citibank Card members!!!!

We ended the dinner with the signature Haagen Dazs Ice-cream Fondue. Which in my opinion is slightly overated and did not justify the price.



So, you might ask, what's so special about this dinner? and how does it justify the title?
Well, to me, instead of welcoming me back, this dinner is my farewell to the mastermind of this dinner. This guy is not only a fellow colleague or friend, he's the travel desk, PR guy, tour leader, "yum yum sik sik tuen" (~drink drink eat eat group) organizer, dried seafood supplier, dirty talk initiator... and much more. So again, Kenneth, I bid you adieu and wish you well in your studies!

The Grand Opening!!!

After much procrastination and running out of TVB series to watch, I’ve finally made up my mind join my fellow established friends in the blogging world. With that I eagerly welcome all to the launch of *drum rolls* CY’s Foot Steps. I wanted this to be a place for me to chronicle my footsteps. Footsteps on staircases, “kaki lima”, gas pedals, sandy beaches.....footsteps on life’s path and footsteps left by others.

To begin I have to go back to the year 2005, recalling my final footsteps in the world of innocence, carefree and pocket money. It was really a vacation to remember, due to limited funds, four friends who have yet to embark on the rat race decided to have a final hurrah in Fraser’s Hill.

Each with different aspirations and vision come the following month, drove a long long way up to this cool and nostalgic town. And I do mean a long long way. For those uninformed, two winding roads lead to this single one way street up the town. The east and west side of the mountain range. On that fateful day, the western approach was closed due to landslide and we have to drive all the way to the other side of the Main Range (“Banjaran Bintang”)! A freaking 3 hours more journey!

However, the vacation was truly interesting, with re-enactment of horror films, embarrassing photo shoots and pushing the physical limits through hiking (well, it’s only my physical limits to be precise...the rest of the gang are perfectly fine). I still remembered that the vacation ended with us wondering when we will have the opportunity to vacation together again.

3 years and a couple of months down the road, all the four of us have yet to go on a vacation together. *Ahem*Ahem*..people, can we do something about this please?

All I have left now (in this PC at least) of this final footstep of a carefree world is this photo.