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MBuji Cafe – The Coffee Adventure

I was back in KL to a cafe called mBuji (pronunced as boo-ji) cafe @ Sunway Giza, Kota Damansara area.

mbuji cafe

But ended up, there wasn’t a ‘special session’ of food photography like what I had previously. Instead, the photo-taking was on the move where once the food appears from the kitchen, I had to quickly grab my camera and quickly take a snapshot of it. Haha.. And I thought I will need to have to setup a ‘mini-studio’ with reflectors and light stands..

Anyway, MBuji is a shop that specializes in coffees where it has a variety of coffee beans from across the globe. It’s African-themed shop with African songs & deco. The concept is similar as Starbucks where it has free wifi but I think what beats Starbucks is that, the coffee are not ‘machine-made’. It takes the creativity of the barista how he wants to prepare the coffee,

coffee beans Like I said, the shop has a very cosy environment with a smoking area on the outside and non-smoking area indoors.

outside indoor1

indoor2 indoor3

 

 

 

 

Apart from the atmosphere, I find the coffee/drinks are very nice! Some of the dessert coffees are well, indescribable.

For example, there’s this coffee called “Bittersweet Love” where after I drink it, I really can’t express out the taste.. Haha..

bittersweet love

It’s like an orchestra of flavours running around my taste bud. It’s actually a blend of orange and chocolate coffee that brings the bitter-sweet taste..

I also managed to try the Hazelnut Dream where it has bits of hazelnuts in the coffee.

hazelnut dream

Of course, there are also the traditional latte, espresso, cappucino and macchiato.

latte

There’s also the ‘complex ordering’ of coffee where you actually can choose the type of coffee-beans for your coffee. It was too complex for me… =/ Or to make it simpler, there are some customers who wanted some specific tastes and the barista will then prepare the drink accordingly.

Oh, another thing that I might add is that the cafe actually provides an ‘educational feat’ of coffees. There are some materials that describes the background, the tastes of different coffee beans there.

Even though it’s coffee-specialized, they do provide tea options as well. There’s this African Spiced Tea which I find quite tasty. african spiced

There are also other favourites like chocolate mocha chocolate mocha

and fruit juices carrot juice

There’s also main courses too! As I was there in the morning, they were serving pancakes, sandwiches and toasts for breakfast.

sandwich

pancake

tuna toast

 

Then for lunch/dinner, they have the all-time favourite Nasi Lemak Special!

nasi lemak special

There are actually people who came everyday just to eat the Nasi Lemak. It has such good response that it gets sold out very fast.

There’s also other famous dishes like Curry Laksa,

curry laksa

and Meatball Spaghetti. For spaghetti, I need to wait for quite some time (10-15min) before it’s out. Apparently, the chef wants to cook the spaghetti from scratch so that it’s fresher and more tender.

 

meatball spaghetti

Lastly, nothing comes complete without Desserts! All the desserts at Mbuji Cafe are home-made, including the muffins, short-cakes and cupcakes. So, not all varieties are available as per the menu.

oven-baked cookies

 

Just when I thought my mum makes the best carrot-cake, the carrot-cake made by the chef here is even better! My mum managed to ask how she does it and now, I have my good share of the carrot cake too! =p

carrot cake

Some of the desserts that caught my eye is the blackforest cake…

blackforest

the Tiramisu cake,

tiramisu

and the banana chocolate chip!

banana choc muffin

The price of the food here is actually quite competitive. An espresso single costs about RM5.90 while the dessert coffee about RM14.90. Some feedbacks were that it’s one of the cheaper and better coffee in the location. And what more is that some of the revenue earned will go back to the charity organizations in Africa to build community schools, libraries and the such.

And lastly, what comes best to this cafe is the personal service from the staffs…

friends of mbuji

 

Just print out this banner below and present it at Mbuji Sunway Giza and they’ll treat you to a FREE espresso. No terms and conditions, just a free cuppa with no obligations. How’s that sound?

mbuji banner

:mBuji Cafe
Lot 15, Block B, Sunway Giza,
Kota Damansara,
47810 Petaling Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia‎

View Larger Map

My New ‘Baby’

I just bought a Panasonic Lumix TZ10 camera for $555 (comes with 8GB SD Card, Case and Screen Protector)

Finally, a smaller size camera that I can constantly bring out.. It has GPS capabilities and take very good video! Something my DSLR doesn’t have..

Panasonic TZ10

Image quality at low light is just so-so but I guess I can’t compare it to its ‘big brother’. Outdoor pictures are quite good!

P1000083

But alas, the GPS isn’t what I expect it to be.. I need to go outdoors without any physical blockages above my head.. It can’t detect any signal indoors.. :(

Oh well, at least next time when I go travelling, I now know where I took all those outdoor pictures..

Exhaustive Weekend

The last weekend was a physically and mentally tiring one. On Saturday morning, I woke up at 730am to renew my licence to a permanent Singapore Driving Licence. Then, met up with the rest at Balestier Road to rent a pick-up truck to well, help Chee Lim, Kah Hon and Susan move house.

Oh, we really travelled the whole of Singapore ex-East. Jit-Vern drove, I was the navigator, Kah Hon and Ian was the banglas and Chee Lim the supervisor. The timing was really bad.. We had to make multiple rounds from Sengkang/Bishan, to Bukit Batok.. The worse was people behind the truck where they had to endure the scorching sun and small droplets of rain. I had my fair of being at the back of the truck for a few trips.. Of course, we had a good laughs as well. When we were transporting two cupboard behind the truck, there literally wasn’t any seat space. JV volunteered to sit/sleep in the cupboard. hahah

jv-wardrobe jv-ian-wardrobe

And girls really do have A LOT Of stuff! Kah Hon only has a couple of bags to carry over.. Chee Lim and Susan had tonnes of stuff here.. I don’t know how they accumulated so many things. I remember when I was shifting my place, me, Ian, Jit Vern and Yee Weng only needed one truck in a single trip to Hougang.. hahaha

Yvonne came back to SG to visit us. She brought back a lot of face masks to be distributed around. We gathered everyone at night for dinner and chill out at their new place. The new tenants were so-kind of treating us all our meals (including the sumptuous Botak Jones) as a gratitude for their banglas’ sweat and blood. (yes, some of us bled). Ian and I almost treated the pick-up truck as our ‘home’ cause we spent a good old 16 hours on it.

So the whole of Saturday was all about carrying, hoisting, driving, sweating and tanning. When you have such an eventful Saturday, you’d think that any sane person would have rested on a Sunday.

But alas, we promised a dear friend to attend her boyfriend’s birthday celebration at Sentosa. Pity Chin Zwen though, she got stuck in Amsterdam due to the Iceland Volcanic Eruption and she couldn’t come back for her boyfriend’s birthday celebration. She had it all planned out but the party must go on without her. To make matters worse, the boyfriend is leaving to US a few days after that for a month and I don’t think they are able to see each other till after that.

Anyway, birthday celebration at Sentosa. It was only a small group of us. Me, Ian, Jit-Vern, Mel and Yvonne. Yin Sin and Yee Weng had to study at home. (though YW joined later). We watched and enjoyed looking at people play in the new wavepool, we took another person’s volleyball to play, and we had BBQ for dinner!

 

surf-wave wipe-out

The hot chick got wiped out in the artificial wave pool… *ouch*

The main thing was the BBQ actually. Most of the people there are his friends (~duh, his birthday party~) and it felt a bit weird at first. But after a while, we just kinda blend in and enjoy ourselves there.

james-bbq

We bought his cake and I think he’s kinda surprised with the cake… =)

james-birthday

But I think it’s quite sad cause his gf wasn’t there and she prepared all these for him. He also made a (I think) sad remark where he said that seeing us makes him feel his gf’s presence.
Guess we can just hope the airports will reopen soon and the two love birds can get back together.

I think I’m getting old. Those two nights really made me feel exhausted. For the first time, I slept at about 11 on Monday. Oh, I did a little project in the house on Monday night. Shall talk about that next time.

Universal Studios Singapore

Sometimes, it’s good to be working in a big corporate company. SingTel has managed to get a 3-night pass (from 30th Mar to 1st Apr) to Universal Studios Singapore at a subsidized rate of $20 per person with a $10 meal voucher. The normal ticket rate is $66 but that’s from 9am to 6pm. This $20 ticket is only valid from 7pm-11pm.

USS tickets The rate can only be extended to one staff and another person. Naturally, I brought Yin Sin there. We were at Vivo at 6pm to explore around the place since neither of us has even been or knows how to get there.. The Universal Studios (USS) is located in Sentosa, the first monorail stop (Waterfront Station).

Universal studios gantry 

You can see this big globe of universal studio landmark there… The queue to go in was very long…. Everyone’s excited to enter..USS Globe

Upon entering

There are 7 different theme sets altogether in USS. They are:

  1. Hollywood
    Hollywood1 Hollywood Star
  2. Madagascar
    madagascar1 madagascar2
  3. Far Far Away
    farfarawayland1 far-far-away-castle
  4. The Lost World
    t-rex
     
  5. Ancient Egypt
    egyptian pharoah ancient egypt 
  6. Sci-fi World
    scifi-1 battlestar galactica entrance
    robot bay
  7. New York
    newyork1  newyork2

But because it’s only $20 and we only have 4 hours… we only get to sit a limited number of rides. The 3 main attractions are the following:

Waterworld Show, which is presented by SingTel (the main reason why we get this exclusive entry). I find the show is really worth watching. It’s like watching a show in a a movie setting. With lots of actions, explosions, and getting wet.waterworld

The stage area have a few zones. Soak zone (where you really get drenched with water. There are people selling ponchos there.)

soakzone

Then, there’s the splash zone where you’ll most likely get wet. Yin Sin and I sat right behind the soak zone, in the splash zone region. Have a very good view right in the middle. The actors/actresses were very interactive as well. It’s a very action-packed show and there was a point in time, I just took away my camera to enjoy the show..

Here are some few ‘screenshots’ of the Waterworld show

ww1 ww2

ww3 ww4
ww5

 

ww6 ww7

Then, there’s the Shrek in 4D.

Shrek 4D

I actually find it quite entertaining. Started off with a magic mirror and some imprisoned pigs.. haha.. It’s quite interactive. Oh, and the 4D is actually a 3D movie (not bad by the way) with the motion master effects. You can feel water splashing towards you, spider crawling over yet, wind blowing across your face, etc.

Then lastly, there’s the “Revenge of the Mummy”

 

 mummy1 mummy2

It’s an indoor roller coaster ride. Quite fun I would say. Yin Sin really enjoyed herself. She shouted and closed her eyes for the entire ride. Haha.. Effects are quite good where you can feel the warmth from the burning fire. I was impressed with their locker system. You don’t need to have a key for the lockers. All you need to do is to fill in your birth date and your fav color and the system will choose a locker for you..

At first, there’s supposed to be the big roller coaster ride as well. But it was closed down due to some technical glitch.

battlestar galactica

Anyway, I find the trip was really worth while. The setting was really very nice… It’s like being there for each setting. I think I love the “New York” set the best. Followed by “scifi world”. The sci-fi world makes you feel like you’re in a real-life MMORPG. By the way, forgot to mention that the food there is really expensive. Minimum spend for a simple meal is about $10 per pax. But they have snack carts all around.. Can buy pop-corns, ice-cream, drinks while on the go..

Really enjoyed myself and I think I’ll wait when all the rides are fully opened before my next visit. Or perhaps, when there’s a request when somebody comes to Singapore and wants to go there, I don’t mind going there again. =) Need to see what it’s like in daytime. Till then…

Reader’s Digest Sweepstakes

I’ve received a letter from Reader’s Digest stating that I’m one of the lucky ones to be eligible for a $200,000 sweepstakes programme. They’ve even attached an lunch invite for the prize drawing event in a 5-star hotel where they’ll come pick me up in a limousine..

  gala-lunch-invite confirm-slip

Well, the thing is, I’ve to wait for another letter within 3-5 days that has the winning prize information. Oh, why can’t they just give me all the information in one-shot so I can act accordingly.. Why need to make me ‘wait’? Of course, the first thing that came into my mind is a ‘sca’m’. So, I went to Reader’s Digest Website and sure enough, there’s this sweepstakes thing going on.. Hmmm.. Is this too good to be true?

About 2 weeks later (today) prior to the receipt of the above document, the 2nd letter did came!

letter2

And it has lots of things in it… There are many cheques with my name in it with a huge sum of money..

cheques

Then, there’s  car key which entitles me to win a car and a chance to win Nintendo Wii!..

key-wii

All I need to do.. is to put all those ‘prizes’ in a ‘YES’ envelope and I’ll be eligible to win all the above! Wow.. Sounds like a great deal!

yes-letter

Then, there’s also a ‘NO’ envelope where I won’t be eligible for any of the prizes but will still be eligible for the sweepstakes

no-letterHmm.. what’s the catch? In the letter, it says that there is no catch.. But in fact, they put the ‘catch’ in a very nice way where in addition to all the above prizes, I’m also entitled to a special discount of Reader’s Digest Subscription! Only $99 one year and there’s a free watch when the first subscription comes! And the best thing is, I won’t be billed until the first subscription comes! …

Guess which letter I’ve sent in?
Which one would you have sent in?

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