the Gump has descended!

Obviously a shameless effort to capitalize on a popular movie, Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. is the latest franchise to arrive on Malaysian shores. Taking a good idea from the movie - shrimp is the fruit of the sea - Bubba Gump is a good old fashioned American style restaurant that emphasizes on... what else, shrimp!

Alice and I went there for our anniversary on a Saturday night. The place was quite packed and we couldn't get reservations in time, so we had to do a walk-in. The front door guys told us it would most likely take about 30-45 minutes, took down my number and promised to call me when they had a table free. We returned after 30 minutes and sure enough, the guy was just about to dial my number as a table had just been freed up.

So far, so good, the restaurant takes up two floors in a section of the Curve. For the uninitiated, it's on the 1st floor, opposite Marche, although with the bright neon lights it's kinda hard to miss it.

The menu does have a whole lot of shrimp dishes, but also fish, beef and chicken. We had the Run Across America sampler, the Bourbon Street Barramundi and a side caesar and clam chowder.

Sorry, no pictures until I can get my digital camera! Blame HP imaging for putting a crappy camera in that model of phone. Bah.

The Run Across America sampler was rather huge, it had a selection of several of their different appetizers, including fried shrimp, hush pups (kinda like a croquette made of shrimp, fish, potato and corn), buffalo chicken strips, chilled shrimp and a great spinach & artichoke dip with corn chips for dipping. The dip was excellent and so was the shrimp, but the buffalo strips were just a tad too sour and spicy, they kinda overdid it with the sauce.

Bourbon Street Barramundi came with two decent sized pieces of the fish, on mashed potatoes and with a Bourbon-based creamy sauce and grilled shrimp. It was excellent for the most part except for the fish being slightly fishy in the middle. Could not fault anything else about it though, as the dish tasted excellent and was filling (and I love mashed potatoes!)

The side caesar and clam chowder was a big, big surprise. The side caesar salad was as large as most other large caesar salads at other places. I don't even want to know about what the regular one looks like. It was plain, though, but tasted good. The clam chowder was very good, bursting with clams and potatoes and goodness, and they even served good crackers to go with the chowder.

Drinks were innovative but limited in selection. We had a mango sparkler (sort of like mango juice with soda) and something called a spotted lemonade, it was lemonade with either strawberries or blueberries. Of course, we had strawberries with it.

After all that, dessert was out of the question, so strawberry shortcake will have to wait until next time.

While we were waiting for our food, one of the waiters came and entertained us with trivia questions from Forrest Gump. The waiter then went off to check on our food, good service. In fact, this was one of the very few times I felt compelled to actually tip the waiter on top of paying the service charge, just because his service was excellent.

The atmosphere is quite casual and fun, rather ala Chili's and Friday's. They have the movie showing on screens and all the decor is inspired by the movie itself. Even the paper they serve the food on is a fictitious paper from the movie. They even have a souvenir shop just outside the restaurant selling t-shirts, magnets and stuff related to the movie and the restaurant. The glasses are nice, you can buy them from the shop or in the restaurant, just with paying a bit extra you can bring home your glass that you had your cocktail in :)

All in all, it was a pleasant experience despite the crowds (once inside, it didn't feel crowded for a single moment) with great food, and good service. Since Friday's has gone down the drain, and Chili's is getting rather mediocre as well, this is probably my new favorite place for casual dining. The bill for both of us came up to RM127, pretty okay since we kinda splurged on the food.

P/S: while we were there, we saw the serving of onion rings. It was enough to make me salivate. A whole stack of large, thick cut onion rings piled almost a foot high. Will try it out when I go again.

Overall, I'll give it an 8.3/10 and I'll definitely go back again, hopefully before it starts going downhill like most things that are Malaysian-run...!

Giant Kelana Jaya Quali food court

is bad. Actually it looks decent. Until you actually taste the food and experience the service.

had stomach problems after that. Rather not go back there again.

stop this unmusical madness!

if I hear Sean Kingston's Beautiful Girls one more time on the radio...

that has got to be one of the most annoying hooks ever written.

makes you soooooooooooicidal >:(

so many things, so little time, so little money!

isn't that usually the case?

annoying! annoying! annoying!

Sometimes people really make the internet a really annoying place to visit. These people seem to care only about themselves, and impose their views and opinions on a long-suffering public and the internet seems to make them more bold since now they can reach a greater audience. I see this quite often in Malaysian-based forums, for some reason.

I used to, for a while, trawl and participate in a forum at puppy.com.my. They do a wonderful service there, from sharing information about training and caring for your dogs to spreading information about dogs for adoption, etc. Suddenly one of the members went crazy and started accusing another two of being dog abusers, liars, running puppy mills, etc. The thing is that I know the person who was being accused personally and I know that she's not doing anything of the sort. But this earlier person kept up the vile accusations through almost every topic in the forum that she could post in, leading to a lot of threads having to be deleted by the forum moderator. In addition to that, a lot of the members overreact to stuff. When a newcomer comes into the adoption forum asking for a pedigree purebred, when happens is a lot of the regular forum posters flame the newcomer, often until the newcomer just leaves in disgust or starts to fight back. One even went to the extent of accusing the newcomer of flaming simply because he/she dared to answer back and say they meant no harm. To me, that really constitutes a breakdown of logic. Needless to say, I don't go there much anymore.

Another time was when a friend of mine did a webpage for one of the telcos here. He published this fact in his blog, which got him a reprimand from the telco representatives (which he promptly removed, which is to his credit. I know, it's a matter of professionalism to not reveal who your clients are in some cases). Everything seemed fine as he removed that post from his blog and the telco was satisfied with the end result. However, in this forum, some idiot named kit**** (real name suppressed just in case anyone does some search and decides to flame me) who is a staunch supporter of this telco and some mobile phone dealer in Penang, decided that my friend was a fraud and decided to call him an asshole in the forum and keep flaming him, and made some very grand claims that he had no right to make. I have no idea what this guy had against my friend, but most of the peons in that forum believed this idiot anyway since he was a well-known and established contributor. I reported him to the forum moderator as he was using a lot of abusive language, but all I got was an acknowledgment from the moderator stating that my complaint had been received. Most likely the idiot got off with no punishment at all since he was probably in cahoots with the moderators and stuff. No justice.

And just recently I find this gem. Searching around looking for information about the latest craze in spas, which is a fish spa, I find this conversation on someone's blog. They had just seen a fish spa being promoted at a new place, and they were writing about it. Most people were commenting saying that they dared not try it because their feet were smelly, etc. This idiot named wayne shows up and starts accusing the blogger of setting up a business that uses imitation fish (!!!). The blogger calmly says that he/she wasn't running the thing, just commenting on it. This Wayne dude continues to slam everyone, saying that they are employees of the fish company, they are using imitation fish, etc. And everyone else is just trying to have a normal conversation. To top it off, he contributes this gem of material:

"Is that what you mean? FISHO is practicing unethical business here. In China, people are not knowledgeable to condemn this Chin Chin because they do not know what Garra Rufa is all about, but remember, this is MALAYSIA, more intelligent people that can speak and read ENGLISH. If you are having another comment on their side, you are confirm FISHO personnel and trying to protect yourself. So, Abchye you want to be a smart consumer or a stupid consumer now? Think about it…….."

Firstly, like I said, anybody who dares to say anything that contradicts him is against him
Secondly, his concept of English is rather flawed, I think it really brings shame to Malaysians if he feels that he is championing Malaysian English.

Not convinced yet? Check out another gem contributed by this joker in the pack.
"Well, i think you really need to read more and do more researches on Garra Rufa before you telling all the nonsense here. Also, if you do have the money travel to Turkey and find out the reason of Garra Rufa is being used in Fish Spa and not the Chin Chin (Tilapia Fish) which simply claims it can nibble and call it Doctor Fish (use Gold Fish instead, is more colourful and nice). Is the Tilapia Fish being used here has any scientific proof of healing? show us if you have... Garra Rufa named Doctor Fish by the industrial experts and professors, but Chin Chin try to steal this name."
and
"I’ve been an expert in this fisherie line for so many years, your tilapia fish can’t lie to the world. Someday, it will definitely surface. Before the day, we all fisherie industrialists wish you could con as much money as you could from the public."

Flaming idiot. I really hate those who just try to antagonize everybody by their brainless words.

I could go on and on, but I think that I've ranted enough for now. photos of Chiang Mai later when I have the time to post them!

Malaysian politics... meh again

I've generally held a rather dim view of Malaysian politics. Many politicians tend to shoot themselves in the foot, sometimes promising one thing and then not delivering or delivering something different altogether, or say the silliest things.

The recently concluded Parliament proceedings proved a point. They show the first half hour of the Parliament meeting live on television, and you would expect the peoples' elected representatives to be on their best behavior in front of the entire nation. Nothing could be further than the truth. They were bringing up trivial issues and blowing them up out of proportion, calling each other rude names, and generally making a nuisance of themselves. This kind of childish behavior can be excused for elementary school kids, but I hardly believe that elected representatives of the people (who, I might add, are paid a hefty salary from the peoples' taxes) are acting like 7 year olds.

On the bright side, it didn't break out into fisticuffs like the Taiwanese Parliament, but that brings an entire new level of childishness into politics, and we won't get into that here.

So, what are we paying these politicians for? To sit in Parliament and call each other names and talk about trivial stuff while the society at large still suffers from greater malaises?

quickie update

yes, I know I tend to abandon my blog for weeks on end and then just post a quick update but well, just humor me for a bit.

finally finished almost 2 1/2 years as a lecturer at UCSI (pronounced yuck-see... just kidding) toward the end of April. I miss the colleagues and most of the students, but not much else. I really hated the stupid hill it was built on, and it helped give me additional problems with my feet, something called plantar fasciitis, so I definitely don't miss the place.

I do miss Samosa Cafe though. It was one of the few places that actually had decent food around the place.

Went to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand for a holiday with the wife for a 5D4N holiday. Thankfully it was off peak period so there weren't too many people (especially not too many Malaysians. it's a preference). We stayed at the Holiday Inn, a 4 star hotel which was outside the town, so getting anywhere required taking a tuk-tuk (basic motor-taxi for two passengers), but it wasn't too bad. It was a nice, quiet place. The total cost for flight and hotel (4 nights) was RM1,500 or so (for two), which was quite good.

I'll post more on Chiang Mai later. Tired and worn out as too many things are happening at the moment!

I'm free!

well, I have been for a couple of weeks, but have been busy.

so I'm actually not really free.

ah, whatever

pics to come soon!