will i am's delayed diary

Commercial Mother's Day was always marked with restaurants running at full capacity, flowers, cakes, and massage chairs. With no shopping and no dine-in, sales of flowers and cakes should still be decent. At OUG morning market, someone was selling bouquets by the roadside, but business was very slow.   My sister and BIL got my mum a combination-- flowers on a cake. A butter cake was topped with waxy paper. A thick layer of rose-lychee fresh cream was smoothed over it, providing a bed for an arrangement of carnations.  And since a fancy dinner was out of the question, SK came over and we had a yakiniku dinner at home. Fresh ingredients with simple seasonings. Hope you had a memorable Mother's Day too. 

The initial plan was to celebrate mum's 75th birthday, and Little Monster's 9th birthday at The Narra on the weekend. Those plans were scrapped with the announcement that MCO 3.0 would commence on the 6th of May. Made last minute plans to celebrate on Wednesday. And to avoid unnecessary work day traffic jams, we ate at Restoran MSL which is close by. Thankfully KH, SK, and Apollo could come. Apollo's mum had to give the dinner a miss because of babysitting duties. The restaurant was pretty quiet. Only three tables were occupied. We didn't order their signature crab dishes, but we did go for the out-of-the-ordinary cheese prawns. KH brought a gianduja chocolate cake which we finished at the restaurant.  Recently, Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf asserted its presence in Bukit Jalil with a new branch at The Link 2. Its really a very rare sight because I am more used to seeing Starbucks. After dinner, we swung over there to have a few drinks. Nice place, but kind of noisy. The...

Some time back, KH bought me a brand new OnePlus 7T Pro from an online merchant. I didn't immediately use it because migrating a smartphone is always a daunting task. When I finally switched over, I started having regrets. Here are my top grouses: Encountered two incidents of disappearing photos from my gallery. The first time it happened, I noticed that a series of food photos I took were missing. A few days later, they reappeared. During the second incident, the photos were lost forever.  Missed call notifications do not appear correctly. A disaster because my phone is often on vibrate only mode. The workaround was to use Google Dialer. The screen is always too dark because the auto-brightness sensor is out of whack. Overzealous notifications. If I try to send a video on What's App, the phone will vibrate each second for the duration of the upload.  Less than impressive battery life.  Although it wasn't a bed of roses, there are some good things about it: A 100% display...

JJ sent a shout-out in our BFF What's App to check who could make it for a night out to celebrate his birthday. Gone are the days of organizing large gatherings that require a few hundred e-mails or messages just to decide on a venue. With age comes a no-nonsense approach to most things.  "Kimpachi. 2 May. 6:30 PM. Who can make it?" Dinner reservations were made for six ( birthday boy, Bunny, AzzuroHyperion, SimonLover, KH, and myself ). Just nice for a private room. A small, and intimate group, the way JJ likes it. Easier to talk. Been a long time since the name AzzuroHyperion appeared in my blog. Maybe it was easier to catch him with gyms closed. JJ treated us to hanpen , a light and spongy surimi product that I had never tried before. I liked it. Our second round continued downstairs, a new soy place called Huang Soy Bar . The market for specialty soy shops has grown of late. In the past, we got our soy drinks from a roadside stall providing ikat tepi take-away, or so...

The dry season had been upon my blog for very long. Neither hunk nor cutie had graced these pages for months on end. Finally, some sustenance has arrived in the fetching for of Barista Badrul from 43 Coffee in TTDI. With those arms, you definitely know that your coffee extraction is in good hands. That cafe was a random choice after KH took me out to lunch at Meatology  ( unfortunately the MCO might be driving it to an early grave ). Well, no fresh meat there other than the truffle siew yuk on my plate. Back to 43 Coffee-- I found the interior to be very out of the ordinary. On one end, they had the typical coffee counter, on the other, there was wall-length Chinese ink painting that looked more at home at a taukeh 's managing office. Behind a hardwood doorway with carved lintel, was another a section that looked like a lounge in a Balinese spa. Colourful plush pillows were scattered on teak furniture. Ignore the identity crisis and visit the place for its good coffee, and of co...

Ray and I connected on Facebook after he introduced himself as an old reader of my blog. KH knew him from other channels, and they had previously met before. Ray told KH that he wanted to meet me, so he arranged a dinner date. Seeing that he has an adventurous taste in food, we went for something less commonplace--  Filipino food at The Narra. We picked him up from his condo in PJ, and we headed to Dataran Milennium. Not many tables were occupied for a Saturday night. Upon entering, I immediately detected a Filipino gay couple who kept looking at us. Later, Ray confessed that those guys contacted him on Grindr requesting for a threesome. My, my. Popular kid. Our dinner consisted of pork sinigang ( a sour soup ), chicken adobo, and pork steak. Actually the soup was supposed to be milk fish, but they got our order wrong. Social outings are never boring with people like Ray. He is very friendly, and has plenty of skanky stories to share. His coming-of-age story could probably be used...