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Tonight is the 15th day of Chinese New Year (last day to gamble, peeps!), or more traditionally known as Chap Goh Meh. It’s believed to be the Chinese’s Valentine’s Day…apparently, in ancient China, young maidens and spinsters would throw oranges into rivers as a gesture of hope for a good husband! In modern times, this practice apparently still carries on, especially in Penang, along Gurney Drive.

What with the actual Valentine’s Day coming, the malls are packed with boyfriends and husbands frantically searching for pressies for their loved ones…hehe…=) I ended up at Midvalley this afternoon to buy a book for hubby, and made a last minute decision to get him a shirt from Raoul. I spent about 20 minutes there deliberating between a few choices, and finally went for a slim-cut, two-ply shirt (very very soft) in dark brown lightly dusted with blue dots. It’s more of a ‘night-out’ shirt than an office shirt, though.

Oh…and as I was making my way from MPH across to Raoul, I saw this long queue of people at the concourse. Guess what they were lining up for? A single stalk of rose. Apparently, Midvalley is having a Valentine’s Day promo where if you purchase above a certain amount, you can get a rose for free, and a chance for a lucky draw. And M’sians are suckers for free stuff…even if it means lining up for an hour to get it! Oh, and MPH has a pretty good promo going on too…it’s called For Love or Money (or something like that…I wasn’t really paying much attention). If you choose Love and you purchase a book that has one of the four predetermined words on the cover (love, relationship…something like that la), you get some vouchers. If you choose Money, the same thing happens, but with different words…duh! =P

Anyways, after buying both pressies, I headed up to The Paper Boutique (2nd Floor, Jaya Jusco side) only to find it filled with people getting their pressies wrapped. Luckily, William (the owner…and he did our wedding cards three years ago) was just finishing up one pressie and he immediately started on mine! Yay! I sat and gossiped with him while he worked his magic…and 20 minutes later…tada! Two prettily wrapped pressies…one in dark red, another in blue (photos later)…

I’d originally planned to go back home to stash it (and take a couple of photos), but when I left Midvalley, it was pouring and poor hubby stuck at the office (he was supposed to take the LRT back), so I drove back down to Citi to fetch him. Had to dump the stuff in the boot…and when we got back home after dinner, while he was taking his bath, I had to quickly run down to the basement, get the pressies, run up, and frantically try to find a place in our overstuffed cabinets to hide it. *pants hard*

Anyways…I’ve got the card, I’ve got the pressies…so I’m off the hook for this year! *grin*

And conversation with hubby on the way back from dinner:
Me: Tonight’s Chap Goh Meh. Want to go throw oranges?
Hubby: *Gives me The Look*
*Pause* *Think* What?!?
*Gives me The Look again*
Oh yeah hor…we’re married! Dunnit to throw oranges…
*Shakes his head* (and probably wonders why he married me…)

And, WS, if you’re reading this, I will willingly and happily sponsor as many crates of Mandarin oranges you need…*grin*

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After a horrible lunch at Dome, and being stuck in a horrible one-and-a-half hour Friday evening jam, I was ravenous and looking forward to trying out C-Jade Express @ Midvalley Megamall. We arrived there close to 9pm, and immediately headed to the Lower Ground floor where the restaurant was located. C-Jade Express opened quite recently, and it serves Chinese fast food like Roast Pork, BBQ Pork, Roast Duck, Honey Pork, Steamed/Roasted Chicken, Suckling Pig (mmmm…), etc.

We queued up at the counter and placed our orders after perusing the extensive menu (the dinner menu had close to 90 varieties and combinations of their meat with noodle/rice, rice with soup, soup by itself, etc…). Hubby choose the Roasted Duck with Noodles and Watercress Soup, while I had the Wintermelon Soup Rice, and we both decided to share a plate of BBQ Pork and Roasted Chicken.

Our orders arrived within 10 minutes, and I eagerly dug in. Hubby’s noodles looked good…it’s the thin type of wantan noodles that I like.

My rice with soup looked very colourful with sweet corn, carrots and vege galore. The soup was very light and the vege was cooked just the right amount without being too soggy. And they added dried scallops in too…yummy! I’ve always loved eating soup with rice (there’s a feel-good factor to it…hehe…), and this one didn’t disappoint. Just the thing to fill up a hungry tummy.

Hubby’s Watercress Soup however, was a big letdown. It was rather oily, and the soup was not boiled long enough for it to absorb fully the flavour of the pork ribs and watercress. It’s a pity, cause we both really love watercress soup…=(

Moving on…I liked the BBQ Pork and Chicken…the Roast Pork has just the right amount of fat in it (to digress a little…we had dinner at Overseas Restaurant @ Armada Hotel last weekend and tried their BBQ Pork…it was superb! Absolutely, positively superb!), and the sauce they used was nice and sweet.

I’m looking forward to going back to try more dishes…I’ve got my eye on the Suckling Pig…*grin* Oh, one thing though…the drink that hubby ordered (Hong Kong milk tea…or something along those lines…) was nauseatingly sweet…not even adding ice helped…

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U.N.B.E.L.I.E.V.E.A.B.L.E.

Hubby and I ended up at Dome for lunch this afternoon (I was literally craving for Little Penang Cafe’s fried kway teow, but the queue was wayyy too long)…not the one at the entrance/exit to KLCC’s park, but the one tucked at one end of the mall, near the Isetan side (that’s how we remember where the restaurants are…it’s either at the Isetan side, or not at the Isetan side…hehe…).

I ordered a basket of garlic bread as a starter, and their Eggs Benedict from their all-day breakfast section of the menu for my main. In the menu, the Eggs Benedict was described as poached eggs, spinach on top of bread (I forgot what kind), served together with hollandaise sauce, chicken ham and cheese. Sounds good, right?

Well, when my meal was served, I was firstly preoccupied with removing the egg yolks from the poached eggs, and then scraping the cheese off (cause I don’t like cheese, and nowadays dairy products just keeps giving me a stomachache…). That done, I was about to take my first bite when I realized…the hollandaise sauce and the spinach was missing. Hmmph. Nevermind…small matter, just call the waiter over. I explained to the waiter (I think he might’ve been the manager) that both the sauce and spinach was missing. Funnily enough, he walked back to the counter first (maybe to check if it’s supposed to come with the sauce and spinach), then came back and took my plate away. I settled down to wait since they’d probably have to whip up the sauce. Surprisingly, my plate was returned in less than five minutes…minus the sauce. Before I could say anything, the waiter apologized and said that they only had very little spinach left…he was rather polite, so I just replied that it’s ok. Before I had a chance to ask him about the sauce, he walked away. Nevermind, I thought…at least they gave me some spinach…and I lifted up the bread and….lo and behold…this is what he meant by ‘very little spinach left‘:

WTF?!?!?

Man…you people better do an inventory of ingredients you have left…what kind of bl**dy service is this?!? One leaf?!?!? I didn’t want to kick up a fuss, so we just quickly ate and left. But I was really horrified that an establishment such as this could have such lousy (and ridiculous!!!) service.

Though I’ve got to admit, I was torn between anger and laughter the minute I lifted up the bread to find that one spinach leaf inside….=)

Haha…I bet that caught your attention, eh?

My parents were sending me back home after dinner…when we arrived at my apartment, we saw the basement car park and the road outside the apartment was pretty foggy. My dad thought it was Aedes fogging until he rolled down the car window…and all of us took in a big gulp of acrid smoke!!

I called hubby immediately, and he said he was already coming down to the ground floor, so we waited in the car for him. By then, we could see smoke pouring out from the basement…really thick smoke, don’t play play. Hubby got into the car and my dad drove out and parked at the road in front of the apartment. Hubby related to us what happened before we arrived….: He came back after dropping me off at my parent’s place and he noticed the smoke coming out from the TNB room. He went up to the ground floor to find the guard…and y’know what? The guard said that, “Yes, he did smell something funny!” ….DUH! And he didn’t go investigate?!? Hubby asked him to call the fire department, to which he replied “Kredit sudah habis…” (I’ve finished my phone credits…)…double duh. By then, some of the residents had already come down to the ground floor, all agreed that someone should call the fire department…well, guess who called? Yayy…my hubby! Hero! Hero! Haha…=)) Apparently, there was a short circuit in the electrical room…no fire, but lots and lots of smoke.

Well, we waited for a good 10 minutes before the fire truck came (and during that 10 minutes, yours truly commented a number of times that if it was a real fire, someone would’ve been burnt to death by now). A police car arrived first, but they just drove past without stopping, which is really weird…I mean, you’re a policeman, you see smoke pouring out from a car park…wouldn’t you stop to ask if everything is ok? Anyways, the fire truck finally came with flashing lights and siren…by then, there were quite alot of people gathered at the road side…a Japanese was using this kick-ass big phone to take photos! Ok ok…I took photos too…haha…will post ‘em up later.

We waited for almost 30 minutes, during which the firemen put on their protective gear, went in and out of the car park, the building manager walked up and down pointing at this and that and the guard (the one that smelt something funny) ran up and down feeling really important. Finally, the smoke dissipated (my poor poor car is gonna stink tomorrow…), and my parents left soon after that. When we were making our way back to the apartment, one of the gwailo residents commented angrily that the fire alarm is not working….! Apparently, the guard didn’t even bother to contact the residents to evacuate the building until he was asked to. And even then, he just used the intercom to call, to which some residents complained that their intercom was spoilt and they of course could not hear it ringing. Trust me, this gets worse! The gwailo continued to tell us that a few weeks ago, all the apartments at the right wing were out of electricity because of a short circuit in the fuse box, and when he looked at the fuse box, all the wires were blackened! Apparently, tonight’s incident was due to a short circuit at the main fuse box or something too…and the firemen who went into the electrical room commented that our building electrical wires have not been maintained.

Imagine if this has happened in the middle of the night. Imagine if it had been a real fire, instead of just smoke? Even if it’s just smoke, imagine if it had wafted up and seeped in through our doors? Scary thought. Well, most of the residents were very angry with the building manager for their negligance in building maintaince…I mean, for a 1,200 sq ft apartment, we are paying RM500 in maintanence every month…surely the building should be better maintained, especially in areas which will affect the safety of the residents? Methinks the management is gonna get a strongly worded letter from the residents very very soon. The gwailo remarked that he might make a police report regarding the fire alarm!

Anyways, hubby was teasing me for being so excited and snapping away with my phone…hmmpph….he took some photos too! Ha!

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I remember writing that I didn’t like this place much because there’s only one item on the menu that I am able to eat. Well, I take that back, because I recently found out that their Char Kway Teow (fried flat noodles) can be ordered without chilli, cockles (and pepper!). And it’s so yummy! Abit on the oily and salty side, but yummy! I’ve had it twice for lunch, and both times, the dish was consistently good. It’s served on a piece of banana leaf, and has lots of beansprouts and chives and three prawns. The prawns were crunchy (I don’t know why but I always end up using ‘crunchy’ to describe nicely cooked prawns!!), though a tad bit small…=) Hmm…writing about this is making my tummy growl with hunger…

And while I’m a big fan of their Red Ruby (water chestnut with coconut milk, shaved ice and jackfruit), I’ve recently fell in love with their Hak Lo Mai (glutinous rice with coconut milk)…it’s so thick and tastes so sinful…and best of all, there are bits of dried longan in there as well! What a surprise it was, the first time I tried it…yummy!

Will take some pics next time I go there…hmm….tomorrow sounds like a good time! =))

Edit: Here we go…drool away!