Back to School

It was the day after Chap Goh Mei that Seputeh DAP organized their CNY function. Sent mum to the Teresa Kok's Kuchai Lama office to help with the preparations. I left the car for her since she wasn't sure what time the thing would end and went home with SK instead. Normally we would have curry noodles nearby, but with her raging sore throat we chose to eat at Meng Kee instead. They now have some mission statement displayed prominently in their shop. I didn't bother to finish reading the contents after finding the wantans to be icky. Customer satisfaction my ass. Was supposed to head home after that, but KH suddenly told me that he wanted to test drive the Volvo V40 (before you start thinking that I can actually be a tai-tai already, you're wrong), so SK and I joined him instead. Wasn't easy getting to Federal Motors. Missed it the first time round and suffered crawling traffic at Jalan Syed Putra and Jalan Tun Sambanthan. Turns out, one had to turn into Midvalley in order to get it. The whole place was basically messy. Construction of their new building was still going on, there was lack of parking and with the service centre lumped in together over there, it was kinda pengz. At the service counter, we were greeted by an old lady with high hair and a knitted scarf. She immediately exclaimed, "Collecting your car?". Told her that it was kinda premature. Anyway, we were entertained by a soft-spoken old man by the name of Lawrence. Before showing us to the car, he brought out a whole bunch of brochures and we started talking about the V40. During the whole thing, SK was the one asking most of the questions, especially regarding total cost of ownership, maintenance, details regarding purchase using the Talent Corp. benefits, etc. Having seen how bad it was outside, we didn't bother to test drive the car. Told him that we would return the following day. Before we left, we went up to the showroom to look at the V40 T4. All I can say is that the car's outlook is very sporty and its low. The interior is kinda small and you can only fit one corpse in the boot. RRP is is around MYR170k. Crazy right? But KH can get it for a hefty discount. Whatever the case, I'm not keen for him to get it. High maintenance cost and lousy resale value weighed heavily on my mind.

Swiped from Stijn Vanderstraeten @ Flickr

KH arranged for lunch with HL at Kechara Oasis, Jaya One. Turns out that the whole place is now known as The School, Malaysia's first enrichment mall, whatever the hell that means. A whole lot of giant alphabets were littered about the unoccupied retail space. So dead. So very dead. Too much enrichment I guess. The vegetarian restaurant was also very quiet that day. So quiet that I could hear what variety show another customer at the other end of the restaurant was watching on her smartphone. Pored over the menu for a long time before deciding what to order. Tried the pan-fried momos (some Tibetan dumpling chock full of sweet basil and served with chili oil), deep-fried mushrooms, 'seafood' treasure pot, mixed vegetables and stir-fried 'unagi'. The mixed vegetables was my favourite. And for drinks, do order the jug of fresh fruit punch. So cheap at MYR13.90. As usual, HL told interesting stories about his working experience in China. Spreads some light about the gay scene there. Funny that friends would drop out of the radar for six months to a year and later tell him that they're either married or fathered children. The pressure is very high. However, he observed that the younger generation of undergrads were very open in terms of sexuality. Just not to their parents. Sounds familiar. Later in the evening, I had a BEC gathering at Bandar Puteri Puchong. Typical food fest intertwined with fellowship, sharing, praise and worship. The end to another long day!