April 2009 - Page 2 of 2 - As Suanie Sees It

how i got a free sandwich with my starbucks latte

April 17, 2009 By Suanie 21 Comments

This morning I stopped by Starbucks on the way to work to grab a cuppa. If you know me well enough, you’d know that my usual drink is iced latte, size venti/ large/ paling besar. So I asked for that, and spotted some nice sandwiches on display and decided to get one as well. The lovely lady at the cashier rang up my bill, and the total payable amount was RM 12.10.

Now, if you’ve ordered the same thing countless times before, you’d be well acquainted with the pricing structure. On the menu board, it says that my large iced latte costs RM 11.50. Then you add in the 5% government tax and it would be RM 12.10. So I was a tad puzzled with what I had to pay. Not that I was complaining of course, but you just want to know lah.

The lovely lady at the cashier explained the mechanics to me. There’s this ‘Breakfast Pairing‘ at Starbucks thing going on. For something like RM6.50, you get a house coffee and a sandwich. Add another RM 3 to switch your plain black coffee to a tall latte. Another RM 2 gets you a Venti size. Sub-total is RM 11.50; 5% tax is RM 0.58 so total payable is RM 12.10 (after rounding up).

So that was how I got a free sandwich when I purchased my Starbucks iced latte. Just thought I’d share

21 Comments Filed Under: Assorted Blah Tagged With: starbucks

ryan and his coin box(es)

April 15, 2009 By Suanie 13 Comments

Like many people, I leave loose change lying around in my room. If you live with a kid, what can you do to maintain the habit and easiness of placing your coins everywhere after emptying them from your pocket or bag, while ensuring that the coins do not end up halfway between the kid’s throat and stomach?

Just make sure that you put the coins at a place three times the kid’s height lah. By the time they are able to reach the shelf (or grab a chair, climb on top of it to reach the shelf), they’d already wise up to the fact that the notes and coins are better off exchanged for shiny new toys instead of being food substitute.

Apparently all the loose change in my room are already Ryan’s. “Ryan, give me back my coin please?” “No, it’s my money! It’s mine, it’s mine!!!” “Uh, okay…”

I told him that I’d get him a piggy bank to store his ‘new found’ money. I did; it was in the shape of a cute pink piggy with a fat stomach that I got at one of those stores that sell cuteness-overload, space-consuming and pretty much useless stuff.

Ryan liked his piggy bank

Two problems: 1) it was made of polyresin; 2) I forgot that Ryan’s a 4 year old boy. The next day I saw bits and pieces of the piggy bank in the bin, and felt my heart sank a bit. I really liked the pig.

Oh well. Off I went in search of a coin box that won’t easily break. I took the boy with me and he picked out this plastic orange teddy bear, which was honestly the best of the lot. Doesn’t say much about the selection, but at least the boy’s got taste.

Ryan loves his teddy bear coin box

I pray for the teddy bear coin box’s longevity. After all the two coin boxes already cost way more than what I leave lying around in my room.

13 Comments Filed Under: Assorted Blah Tagged With: ryan the nephew

Tasty chicken and lamb mandy @ Al-Rawsha

April 13, 2009 By Suanie 27 Comments

Update on 20th April 2012: Al-Rawsha has since moved to near Bulatan Kampung Pandan.

We went for a company lunch earlier this month at the Al-Rawsha restaurant in Kuala Lumpur. Since then, I’ve not been able to get the chicken mandy dish out of my mind.

It was tasty, succulent and scrumptious. Something like our nasi beryani (and I’m talking about the Batu Pahat version), but this one was a lot healthier. For one, they do not use gallons of oil to cook their dishes. The entire platter of rice you see in the photo above seemed to contain only a tablespoon of olive oil. It was so aromatic and delicious that I would have consumed more if I could. The chicken and lamb meat were nicely done and most yummy. Take a fork to it and the meat falls like cotton from the bone.

Not sure what was ‘mandy’ so a quick Google search directed to a mandy spice mix.

Need to revisit the restaurant again. If you want to get there before me, it’s along Jalan Damai (Off Jalan Ampang). The map on the restaurant web site is somewhat accurate, except that it’s not directly opposite of Kelab Aman. You’ll have to go slightly further than that, past the Chinese school and a couple other Middle Eastern restaurants. Service was blah, but food was good.

27 Comments Filed Under: Eating Out Tagged With: al-rawsha, chicken mandy, Food, lamb mandy, lebanese

tuesday tweet thoughts

April 7, 2009 By Suanie 11 Comments

I clicked clicked on @edgemy’s tweet and came to a poll where they were asking readers what they think would be Najib’s next surprise announcement (following the release of the 13 ISA detainees). One of the four options was, “Abolish the Printing Presses & Publications Act”, which got me LOL. I tweeted back, “@edgemy re: latest poll. abolish the PPPA?!? hahaha would that ever happen it’s pivotal as a control mechanism” to which they replied, “@suanie We like to remain optimistic, heh.”

Aside from me bercerita-ing about my Twitter activities, I can’t help but to wonder what @NajibRazak will come up with next. Someone on a forum said about our new PM, “Out with the old, in with the old”. Whether or not our new PM will be able to make people see differently, remains to be seen. But to totally abolish the PPPA at this point in time? I looked into my magic crystal ball for an answer, and my magic crystal ball laughed so hard that it fell off the stand and broke into a gazillion pieces. Bloody useless RM10 piece of shit.

Also I’m a bit desensitised about the whole Malaysia political scene. Almost gone are the days when I used to be so gung-ho about certain people and incidents, when I’d blog about it because everyone and their rabbits need to know my thoughts on the subject; basically when I thought I was ultra important to the grand scheme of things, and I could change the world. Or cause a ripple, at least. Now I understand how easy it is to slip into tidak-apathy land.

I still give some semblance of a shit, of course. But damn fed-up lah. Ruling parties are the same, opposition parties are the same. The ones whom I thought could make a difference aren’t making the differences I thought they’d make. Either that or they are just one smart fella surrounded by a bunch of stubborn geezers from the stone age era.

See, I’m off-topic already (again). I bet a lot of people are also damn fed-up with my thinking this way. You keep up the good work lah.

Anyway, I just wanted (among other things) to give a shout out to The Edge Malaysia on Twitter. I have no idea who they are, but so far I’m enjoying their tweets, and am reading The Edge Malaysia a lot more than other news sites. It’s quite something because I’ve never bothered to read it before, but their team of Twitterers made the whole thing so fun and enjoyable that I can’t help myself.

Other Twitter thoughts? @AirAsiaBlog needs to be more communicative. I have no idea what they are talking about sometimes, because I think they refer to stuff on their blog which I don’t check if there are no links or indications on what it’s about. Same will go for @TuneHotels which is relatively new. @MAS is good so far, sorry to hear about the robbery. @NajibRazak is just rubbish. @NikiCheong tweets too much. Not complaining, just saying, heh

If you are on Twitter, I’m at twitter.com/suanie. If you aren’t, well then, why not?

11 Comments Filed Under: Assorted Blah Tagged With: twitter

here we go again

April 6, 2009 By Suanie 21 Comments

I’ve just ‘enrolled’ myself under a (fucking expensive) Reductil programme recommended by my doctor.

Let’s see if science will succeed where sheer willpower has failed.

No snarky comments, kthx.

21 Comments Filed Under: Assorted Blah Tagged With: me wants to be a lean machine

elawyer law conference 2009 @ um

April 3, 2009 By Suanie 11 Comments

One fine Saturday morning, I dragged my sleepy arse to Universiti Malaya for the eLawyer Law Conference 2009. Our dear Cheng Leong was to present a talk along with Nizam Bashir on Malaysia’s intellectual property and defamation laws.

With Cheng Leong and Eddie of eLawyer. Photo by A.

Saw Julian, Tock and Zoe. Peter and Wuan arrived late, because they superstars mah…

Cheng Leong saying lawyer-ish stuff

For what was presented at the talk, feel free to read this, this, this and this. Can’t think properly now because I am multi-tasking — thinking of what to eat for lunch, doing some work, semi-watching ‘Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull’ which is running in the background, updating my blog…

I didn’t mean to isolate you Zoe.. It was cold

Peter had Wuan go check out the UM toilets… Typical

By the way, go help out Julian Hopkins with his Malaysian Blogs Survey 2009. It’s for his PhD thesis thingy, will take about 10-15 mins of your time, and there’s even a lucky draw where the winners would win a pair of Platinum Movie Suite tix.

So if you are a Malaysian blogger or someone who reads Malaysian blogs, please help him out yah

11 Comments Filed Under: Parties/ Events/ Fun Tagged With: blogging, blogs, conference, elawyer

lulz of the day

April 2, 2009 By Suanie 18 Comments

You must must MUST read this!

Gadis seksi pancing undi BN?

Then tell me what you think of the following paragraph:

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Dalam sidang akhbar tersebut, Zahid ditanya mengenai keberkesanan pendekatan nyanyian dan tarian yang digunakan bagi menarik pengundi Cina.

Dalam jawapannya, Ahmad menegaskan bahawa ia “harus dihormati kerana ia sebahagian daripada budaya Cina.”
=====================================================

HAHAHHAHA. Seriously, if you want a bunch of skinny chicks in skimpy clothing prance about at your press conference, feel free to go ahead and do it. But to associate it with Chinese culture? HERRO ARE YOU FOR REAL?!?

18 Comments Filed Under: Assorted Blah Tagged With: omgwtfbbq