Gabriel's Musings - Part 2
 

Basketball Game

Basketball has been a game where we always enjoyed from back in secondary school, all the way until.. well, present day.

There was a time where after form 6, we would always go to Fair Park basketball court to play every morning. Even the girls like Yvonne and Michelle Soong would join us too!
And there was an occasion where we brought our then digital camera and filmed some of the games we played.. One of them involves a one-on-one game…

 

And as short as it is, Ian won Yee Weng easily…

Then up to present day, so happened that we are all in the same location and we still play basketball on weekends… This is where our friend wanted his glory again..

 

Will he win again?

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

Jeju Island – Korea Day 5

The last and final day of touring around Korea, we explored the Eastern part of Jeju Island!

We woke up around 9am where our driver pick us up to our first location, Manjanggul Lava Tube! It’s a cave formed by the flow of lava..

manjanggul lava tube

The insides of the cave is filled with chilly-cold air… Should have brought a jacket.. the cave is 7.4km long and is one of the largest lava tubes in the world with a height of up to 23m!

lava tube

^ A very blurry pic of the cave cause it was super dark..

After the lava tube, we went to Seongsan Ilchulbong, also known as Sunrise Peak! at sunrise peak

It’s a 20-min climb to the peak but due to time-constraint, we only took pictures outside which has a very nice view as well.

hill This is a place where they have famous female divers as well.

fishing village

And of course, we camwhored a bit there..

chee lim with grass

cheelim-bishanbishan

And we skipped off happily

skipping

Our next stop, is lunch!! Black Pig BBQ!!

black pig lunch

Oohh.. such a tasty dish.. We bbq the pork and wrap it in a leaf together with kimchi, taugeh, onion, etc.

bbq black pig wrap pork in vege

And why do we call it black pig? Cause the pig is really black!

It’s like Indian PIg.. haha

black pig We went opposite our lunch place to visit the Seongeup Folklore Village. It is an authentic traditional Jeju village.

seongeup folklore village There is a English-speaking tour guide who explains most of the things to us.. But basically, what they are trying to do is to sell us some health drink traditionally made in the village.

vase And again, more camwhore..

bishan carry vase chee lim carry vase

Our next stop is Seopjikoji, the place where they filmed the Korean drama, ‘All In’. But just about driving into the pathway towards Seopjikoji, we took a pit stop to a peculiar scene by the shore.

It’s filled with seaweed!!

seaweed beach

And being the ‘boys’ that we are, we tried to eat some of them…

eat seaweed

It’s really quite peculiar seeing so much seaweed at the shore at one place… Walking on it gives a tingly feeling.

seaweed shore Eventually, we reached Seopjokoki, the supposed highlight of the day. Upon reaching, our driver took us to the rocky terrain to take pictures, a place where tourists normally wouldn’t go. So, we had to climb our way through the rocks to take pictures.

imbalance Of course, all is worth it.. There is no crowd, and it’s very windy with beautiful scenes.

bishan with sea

chee lim-yee weng chee lim

clear water

And finally, we reached the famous ‘church scene’ in the All In show.church And once again, more camwhore.

cheelim-bishan yee weng-kungfu

The place has a very nice scenic view.

With horses,

horsesStatue of Mother Mary,

mother mary statue Trail to the lighthouse,

trail lighthouse

The lighthouse itself,

light house

The scene from the lighthouse.

 IMG_4357path

And the famous rock…

lalang, rock

Oh, one thing I must comment. A lot of couples in Korea has matching outfits! A lot of couple-tee and some, like this, have matching dresses and pants!

matching couple And since it’s the place of the All In drama, we tried to act out some of the scenes from the show!

scene 1scene 2

 scene 3scene 4

Yee Weng and I tried to integrate the scene from IP Man 2 into it….

ip man 2 scene

And that’s the last of it.. Right after Seopjokoji, we headed straight to the Jeju Airport to fly back to Seoul. We had some light dinner at the airport and the fried chicken again back at Yvonne’s place. Our flight was early next morning heading back to Singapore.

And that’s all for the Korea trip. I’d say it’s a short and sweet trip. Didn’t know that I’d like Korea and its food. I think the Korean food in Singapore is really bad as compared to those found in Korea.

Anyway, will look forward to the next holiday trip!

looking forward

Till then…

Promotion Lunch Treat – Pacific Orchard Hotel

This year round, there were a lot of staffs being promoted in my company. In my department itself, there are already two promotions!
So, my promoted colleagues have arranged a lunch treating session at 10 at Claymore, in Pan Pacific Orchard Hotel.

The menu that was shared with us looks like it has a lot of food selections. But when we were there, the place isn’t as big as was expected though. The food was so-so. Some of them are quite good, some of them are not really up to standard.

The appetizers that I had!

appetizer

There’s smoked ham, smoked salmon, kerabu, and a lot of other appetizers buried underneath. The appetizers are quite appetizing! A bit saltish though but I guess smoked meats are like that.

My main course consists of two of these! haha.. The fish was so-so but the black pepper lamb is delicious! Very tender meat.

main course

And lastly, desserts! They serve durian pastes there.. yummy!

desserts And all these thanks two my two promoted-colleagues…

clarence khoo soo fern

who treated the whole department (12 of us) together with our admin.

Mobile VAS Planning

Yup. My department is only this small..

Jeju Island – Korea Day 4

Jeju Island – the country’s largest island, has an inactive volcano at its centre and it’s hosts scenes of many Korean shows! We spent two days here where we stayed at Hotel Milano Crown; at the heart of Jeju City

hotel milano crown

As Jeju Island is a rather large island, we hired a non-English speaking cab driver to drive us around Jeju for 100,000 won a day. An English speaking cab driver would cost us 150,000 instead. But since we already know exactly where we wanted to go, we took the less costly alternative. Turns out, our driver speaks a lil’ bit of English. He’s quite cute actually.. He ended up being our driver and photographer.. Ok, back to that later..

We split our exploration of Jeju Island into two parts – East and West. Problem with going around Jeju is that all the attractions are very far away from the city; approx 1-2 hours drive. So on this day, we explored the West Part of Jeju Island first.

So, our first stop is to Love Land. A sex recreation theme park. We had a quick lunch there first as we were starving from our travel!

chee lim and bishan

The biggest saba fish I’ve ever seen…. (maybe because the SG ones are smaller)

saba fish

 

We took lots of pictures in the Love Land as some of the concepts/figurines are quite funny…

Such as the mermaid and the merman

mermaid merman

The dog and his host..

doggie style

And some legs upside down..

 inverted

Inside, there is a shop selling all the ‘sex-toys’..

 sex giftsdildo

I didn’t know Korea is so open in all these..

After that, we went to the Mysterious Road just next to the Love Land where it’s an optical illusion where you think that you’re going downhill, but when you stop the car, the car actually slides backwards…

Then, we journeyed to the 1100m above sea level at Mount Halla, the volcanic mountain of Jeju.

1100m

The actual peak of Mount Halla requires a 7-hour hiking trip which unfortunately, we do not have the time to do so… Apparently, the scenic at the peak of Mount Halla is beautiful, with the volcanic crater and all..

Too bad, we only managed to walk around the boardwalk of the natural surroundings around a volcanic mountain.

rock park

 bishan chee lim rocks

The weather was very cooling at the top… We were lucky cause it seemed like it’s going to rain but it didn’t..

We then headed to Jusangjeollidae, a cliff with Basalt Columns. The rock formation is breathtakingly beautiful

rocks1

 

 rocks2rocks3

rocks4

The area has a park also for people to well, linger around..

table stones

Nex stop, is the Oedolgae, aka the Lonely Rock

oedolgae

This is the place where they screened the show “大长今” or (dai cheong kam) in canto.

dai cheong kam

So, they have a place to put our faces inside to act as the pretty doctor..

  yee weng

Again, the area has a big park as well, with ponds, trees, etc.

chee lim park

 bishan grassyee weng oedolgae

Next stop, is the Cheongjiyeon, to see the waterfall. It’s a very commercialized place where it’s filled with tourists and it is designed nicely with trails towards the waterfall.

cheongjiyeon rockriver bridge

stream

They even have koi fishes and ducks living at the stream..

 koi fishduck family

Along the way, it has many mini-waterfalls…

 mini waterfall

leading towards the main waterfall..

cheongjiyeon waterfall

It’s quite a long walk leading to that waterfall.. And worst of all, it’s very crowded with people…

crowded waterfall

Next, we went to another less-crowded waterfall, the JeongBang Waterfall.. In fact, I prefer this waterfall cause

(1) it’s less crowded
(2) we can get a very close to the waterfall
(3) this waterfall flows directly to the ocean

jeong bang waterfall

We can fill the water splashing right into our faces; together with the strong sea breeze…

jeong bang waterfall close

We spent a lot of time in this area enjoying the wind, the water and the sight…

 

 yee weng jumpbishan waterfall

  korean girlchee lim ocean

And our final sight-seeing stop for the day, a view of the Sanbangsan.

sanbangsan view

The coast has many black rocks…

black rocks

And we just gladly take more pictures there…

posers We had seafood dinner nearby where we tried ‘live seafood’. Not exactly eating them alive, but when it was served to us, it was still living.. We had to boil/cook it alive.. *ouch*

live seafood

Outside the restaurant is where it faces China.. Albeit it’s geographically physically not visible, but the next land in that direction is China..

rock Turns out, the place is also where they acted the scene from Dai Cheong Kam.bishan scene By the time we’re done in this place, it’s almost night time.. We headed back to Jeju City for some light snack shopping before hitting back to the hotel.
It was around 9pm when we reached and I wanted to go out a bit more while the rest were watching how Portugal trashed North Korea in World Cup. So, I explored the surroundings alone and I managed to find a pork bbq place! I quickly went back to the hotel and ask yee weng if he wanted to eat… He gladly joined me and luckily, they screened World Cup in that shop too.

So, we had Pork Belly BBQ!

korean pork bbq

Even the sight of it makes me drool… It only costs us about 14000 won for this meal…

yee weng korean bbq

That is all for the first day in Jeju… Coming up next, the other half of Jeju!

Page 2 of 9812345102030...Last »
SEO Powered by Platinum SEO from Techblissonline