will i am's delayed diary

Went to OUG wet market as usual and had a big bowl of curry noodles for breakfast. Amazed that it still cost MYR4.50 after the implementation of GST. Back at home, I rearranged my Laq model for something more angular. I immediately missed my geodesic sphere. Haha. Mum was supposed to make wine chicken for lunch, but the rice wine turned to piss. She threw that out and went for plan B-- Noodles in chicken soup. In the afternoon, I revived my swim routine with the pair of olive green Aussiebum swim trunks that just arrived in the mail. Took more than a month. Thought some postman had swiped it. In the evening, my neighbour brought over a plate of onde-onde with a twist-- the skin had a mixture of sweet potato in it. Quite yummy. On Sunday, mum went for her massage in Kepong again. We ate an expensive hawker lunch at Restoran Sixty Three Kopitiam . Standard price: MR6.50. Ouch. I did some reading at Nelson Tan Cafe while waiting for KH to appear. So nice of him to accompany ...

On the first Saturday after my Siem Reap trip, mum declared that there was no need to go to the market. There was adequate ingredients for the week's cooking. We ate breakfast at Equine Park's Restoran Tar Chong . Truthfully, I had not been there in ages. Not too fond of the crowds there. Afterwards, we went to AEON since it was in the vicinity. Mum made lunch with some multi-grain noodles. Yummy stuff especially with mum's embellishments. Played with a Laq model that I had bought on MySale. It has interesting parts that one can use to construct marvelous geometric models like geodesic spheres. Different from Lego. A nice clacking sound when you attach and detach the pieces. Felt like a kid again for a while. In the evening, I attended Bunny's birthday dinner. With Bunny's birthday, there's always a word association with "Sushi Tei" or "Sushi Zanmai". For 2015, we chose the latter. It was session number two ( there's usually th...

Been a while since Tater last visited Kuala Lumpur. He was in town for a series of meetings that got turned around. Dinner was sheduled for 7:00 PM at Ichi Zen but both Tater and KH were late. While waiting for them, I roamed around Tokyo Street, looking at the Chibi Maruko-chan Land that was set up to celebrate Tokyo Street's fourth anniversary. When they finally arrived, we quickly ordered. Seems that all the prices had increased. Tater updated us on the ups and downs of his business. Also revealed some of his alternate plans if things don't start looking up in a year. He also told us about ZR's recent visit to Bangkok. In return, we told him about our vacation in Siem Reap. Tater also hoped that we would make a visit to BKK soon. My last visit to the capital of Thailand was in 2008, guess it is high time that I made a 'pilgrimage' there.

The third and last day of our temple crawl left us with a choice of whether to visit Tonle Sap Lake or not. The Roluos Group of temples was very near the largest fresh water lake of South East Asia so Nat asked us if we would like a visit. After some deliberation, KH and I decided not to go for it. Our first stop was Preah Ko, the first temple built in the ancient city of Hariharalaya. Built in the 9th century, its older than all the other temples that we had seen in the last two days. Preah Ko means Temple of Sacred Bull and rightly so with three statues of Nandi, Shiva's sacred mount facing three of main brick towers. Behind those three towers are another three smaller towers. Like all the older temples, this temple had decorations using stucco. Although old, it had beautiful sandstone carvings on the lintels. Although small, it was beautiful to look at. Second temple of the day was Bakong, the first temple mountain of sandstone built by Indravarman I. It is said to b...

On the second day of our temple run, we started at the Victory Gate of Angkor Thom. This gate is the fifth gate into Angkor Thom in addition to those at the four compass points. Its identical to the other gates, but moss covering the face towers give it a whole different kind of look. The first temple of the morning was Preah Khan which translates to "Royal Sword". Another project of Jayavarman VII, but dedicated to his father instead. Much of the temple was not restored leaving it with touch of vegetation and trees among the structures as in Ta Promh. Large Spung trees embrace the stone, shining silver in the sunlight. The temple is flat with galleries all around and a stupa in the middle. Strangely, it had a two-storey building with round columns ( so far we had only seen angular columns and single storey buildings ) with an unknown purpose. Nat guessed that it housed the "Royal Sword". It also had dvarapalas guardians and garudas holding nagas . And there...