Change... Switch On! 1, 2, 3! Kikaida!

Fuyoh I love retro...


Copyright (c) Kelvin Tan

Lakehouse VS Il Mare - FIGHT!

Went to watch The Lakehouse over the weekend. Having seen Il Mare (the original Korean version), I must say that Keanu and Sandra did a great job and I enjoyed this cute little movie very much.

I liked Il Mare but was a little bit indifferent towards it as it was made during a time when the Korean movie market had yet to face its renaissance and become what it is today i.e. "More Hollywood than Hollywood". It was during a time when Korean movies were slower in pace unlike the stuff of legends we saw in more recent times e.g. Oldboy in 2003.

Anyway, there was obviously another fan of Korean movies in the cinema because when "Il Mare" was mentioned in this movie, she accidentally clapped!

Putrajaya And Pyongyang

On a hot steamy Sunday morning, I decided to visit Putrajaya (regardless of the bloody weather). Here are some shots...

Updated Putrajaya main gallery



Taman Botanical



Taman Wetlands

Copyright (c) Kelvin Tan

Also, did you manage to catch the award winning Discovery Channel documentary, A State Of Mind? It's superb... an insight into North Korea and some of its people. How can a society be so single minded in its activities and be trained to hate the Americans so much? It's a wonderful spectacle and I have no doubt increased my respect for North Korea!

Kangsane Review (KOREAN FOOD!!!)

A fortnight ago, I led a group of Friedchillies Kaki Makan to Kangsane in Ampang Korean Village. We pigged out and here is the review (to be in Malay Mail today).

CLICK HERE FOR BIG SCAN OF MALAY MAIL REVIEW!

(UPDATE) And this is the link to the actual Malay Mail website.

Enjoy!

Pen Pornography

Thanks to my insane obsession with fountain pens...


Copyright (c) Kelvin Tan

As usual, click on the photo for the FULL GALLERY!

Makan at Lucky Loke

Lucky Loke (aka Restaurant Kean Fatt) serves decent food... but the highlight of our visits there is always the garlic fish (choose the siakap!)

Chew Pai Taufu



Nai Bak Cheng Chau - love the ikan bilis



Ham yu fah lam pou - another popular dish there



Garlic fish! Deep fried with tons of fresh rough chopped garlic, chili padi and cilantro. Sauce is made from fish sauce, sesame oil, lime and some sugar

Copyright (c) Kelvin Tan

Lucky Loke/Kean Fatt is in SS3 in the shop row behind Tmn Bahagia LRT. Go early! And yes, order the mah tai chuk cheh (waterchestnut and sugar cane).

The Editing Room

Hilarious script spoofs from famous movies!

An excerpt from one of the scripts for Revenge Of The Sith...

HAYDEN CHRISTENSEN
What have I done?
(pause)
I submit myself to your will, Ian.

IAN MCDIARMID
That was fast. Well, now that you have taken a single, somewhat justifiable step toward the Dark Side, there's no turning back. Go kill all of the Jedi in the temple, including the children.

HAYDEN CHRISTENSEN
Right, go kill the children. Got it.

IAN MCDIARMID
Well, kill everyone, not just--

HAYDEN CHRISTENSEN
(leaving)
On my way to kill all of the children now! Whee!


Anyway check out the rest of the hilarious stuff HERE!!!

Among other things...

Here are some shots from Laman 2006 I took yesterday. Wasn't feeling too productive though... it was hot and crowded and there wasn't that much to shoot. At least I ate Nasi Lemak Tanglin after a long time.

Click on the photo for full gallery



On another note, last week had food at Lucky Section 17 again...

Spinach soup with bits of century egg



Hot plate taufu



Chew pai spicy fish... I think siakap is best for this



Last Wednesday attended the Chaumet Boutique Opening at Starhill... I was pleasantly surprised with the event... decent food! Cigars were ok but wine was a bit ugh... there was champagne too. And 5 ex-Miss Malaysias in attendance...

A bit of the lavish setup



Deanna Yusoff being host - she also sang a French song



4 Miss Malaysias in the pic... name them all - event manager Arianna Teoh was around too



Finally, I was in the mood to do some cooking for dinner last night, so I made some nyonya laksa... (this is the simple version since I was only cooking a small portion)

Omelette



Cucumber, cilantro and daun kesum



Fishball and taugeh



Sambal made from shallots, chili, dried shrimp and belacan



Yellow noodles



Gravy made from spices and santan



And the finished product!



Copyright (c) Kelvin Tan

Have a good day!

Pirates Of The Caribbean - Dead Man's Chest (SPOILERS)

Went to watch this crafted blockbuster... I liked it a lot.

SUMMON THE KRAKEN!




Good
- Fun!
- Keira is always stunning
- Depp is in his element
- Love Nighy's pirate accent and his Cthulhu mode as Davy Jones. The tiny inflections make the character so real and fearsome!
- Excellent surprise at the end

Bad
- Should have shortened the unnecessary swordfight
- Cliffhanger ending

JACK... SPARRROOOWWW!!!!



All in all, a great distraction as we wait for Pirates Of The Caribbean 3 - World's End which has Chow Yun Fat as Sao Feng/Cheung Po Tsai... (they filmed 2 and 3 back to back)

Chow in pirate mode (updated)

Cineleisure...

Anyone checked out the new Cathay cinemas yet? I LOVE the nostalgia when they replay the old movie intros for Cathay Organization! The 80s one with the 3 rolls of film shooting into the spinning CO logo and the electronica music... fuyoh! A sign of good movies those days!

Henshin!!! Yet Again...

Beautiful Medicom RAH Kamen Rider The First Ichigo figure!


Copyright (c) Kelvin Tan

Blogging into the next decade

When in the 90s, almost no one has heard of a blog before, today, blogs are as ubiquitous as char kuay teow. Speaking of char kuay teow, while I was chomping down on mine during lunch just now, I was wondering how the blogging scene will look evolve into throughout the next 10 years. Here are some possible scenarios

1) blogs will be on everyone's mobile phones
2) famous blogs and Youtube will be on TV (and Astro will charge for it)
3) there will be Uncle Ho (i.e. pirate) DVDs of compilations of famous blogs
4) there will be a great BLOG WAR to end all blog wars
5) just as there are blogs about food, there will be food named after blogs
6) there will be Pulitzer prizes for blogs
7) there will be white hat and black hat bloggers
8) blogs will be recorded on your IC
9) blogs will be integrated with your GPS signal
10) bloggers will get younger and younger and kindergarten kids will start to blog
11) blogging will appear on CVs
12) famous bloggers will have their own action figures
13) there will be a movie based on blogging
14) the blogging trend will end

What do you think? Anything to add?

Launch of Digisniper

ST invited me to be a guest blogger on this new photoblog!

Blast From My Past Pt10 - TV and Radio

Those days, we had TV, radio and cinemas to keep ourselves entertained.

On TV, there was the Blacksheep Squadron (Greg Pappy Boyington!) and Combat (starring Vic Morrow). Lots of war series on air indeed. There was also a lot of cowboy series including the Wild Wild West, Bonanza and Maverick. Mostly reruns of American series from the 60s but helluva popular! We had the most expensive TV series at that time, the 6 Million Dollar Man (I love how Lee Majors squints to activate the telescopic vision). Down below are some other series that I grew up with (too many to list them all)

- QED
- Voyagers
- Fall Guy
- V
- Knight Rider
- Airwolf
- The Incredible Hulk
- Rich Little's You Asked For It
- Hari Ini Dalam Sejarah
- Drama Minggu Ini
- Hiburan Minggu Ini
- Empat Sekawan
- SWAT
- Police Woman
- Hunter
- Robin Of Sherwood
- Sapphire And Steel
- Man from UNCLE
- The Saint
- Chocky
- Humphrey Bear
- Rolf Harris
- Ultraman

Local comedians were popular back then. While we remained enamoured of P Ramlee and gang, we were also entertained by Mat Sentul, Badul, Jamali Shadat, R Jaafar (pui! tahi kuching!) and the rest of the zany stereotypical characters like Acappan and Tan Ting.

On the radio front, the Blue Network and its latter incarnation, Radio 4, kept us entertained with Kee Huat Radio programmes, Music Machine and mostly stuff related to Patrick Teoh, Faridah Merican and Constance Haslam. I made sure I listened to Casey Kasem every weekend for his Billboard Top 10. I remember winning some small contest on air when I was around 10 years old and it took them about a year before I got my prize (a crummy T-Shirt).

Blast From My Past Pt9 - Sit down games...

Today kids only know of many sit down or party games. There's the classics of Monopoly, Cluedo, Risk and Scrabble as well as the ubiquitous Uno plus Jenga among other things. Taboo and Pictionary is a popular choice as well.

When we were kids, we used to play a ton of variant pakau games (flower comes to mind) as well as card games that had pics and specs of cars, airplanes and warships on them. Top Trump was a famous brand back then. We also had Happy Family, Donkey and other colourful cards to play with our family and friends.

For more mature players, there was dam/checkers, animal chess (cat eats rat which eats elephant) and chinese chess. There was also a Chinese variant of Monopoly called Millionaire. My favourite was a Monopoly variant with a fairground theme (can't remember the name).

Many have forgotten how to play Ludo, Backgammon, Snakes and Ladders and Pachisi and many board games have gone into obscurity. I even had a game based on the Disney movie, Black Hole.

There's an old chinese card game played by the old folks called Chiki (the Straits Chinese played them). I have a set at home but have no idea how to play it. The Malays had their congkak. I think in Malaysia, there wasn't a culture of playing Go/Weiqi though.

During the Apple II era, I was so in love with the game called Archon that I made my own table version using drawing block paper... but the rules I made were quite complex.

Malaysia Boleh!

Loctor Mayat brought this to attention... it's hilarious!

Blast From My Past Pt8 - Things ain't what they used to be...

... some things we miss and some we don't

1) 500ml glass F&N bottles filled with Orange, Sarsi or Ice Cream Soda.
2) Maggi egg noodles chicken flavour (fat noodles)
3) Apple IIe/+ and its ease of use (Taipan and Lode Runner on 64kb of RAM!)
4) Kacang putih man with table on the head
5) Making razor sharp spinners with flattened bottle caps and string
6) Toy guns that use real gunpowder pellets in red paper strips
7) Making long jump ropes with a ton of rubber bands
8) LeRun and Chopper bikes!
9) Coca Cola yo-yos
10) Rainbow coloured rubber balls attached to elastic strings
11) Tightly rolled long strip of paper attached to bamboo sticks that you whip at ppl
12) White and blue Bata japanese slippers
13) Wise potato chips Ranch cut... Mexicana flavour (green packet)
14) Sunshine bread from the roti man who whacks the iron bell on his tricycle
15) Ultima and Lord British
16) Lonewolf and Create Your Own Adventure books
17) New Thrill (and Malaysian Post)
18) Movie News magazine
19) Doodling on the drawing block
20) Rough Rider cigarettes (I don't smoke)
21) Crusty cut bread from the kedai kopi (save the crust)
22) Raleigh black bicycles
23) Green Spot/Sinalco
24) Mee tembam
25) Mind Your Language

Feel free to add to the list...

Garo Volume 4!

Copyright (c) Kelvin Tan

My Super Ex-Girlfriend Trailer

My Super Ex-Girlfriend



Upcoming romcom from Uma Thurman and Luke Wilson. I'm looking forward to this hilarious new take on superhero movies! Looks hilarious!

David Hasselhoff's new video featuring KITT!

David Hasselhoff - Jump In My Car



This is hilarious! David Hasselhoff's new music video featuring KITT!

Revolution's Blog

Ever since Tjeng Jaw left as the JLC forum moderator for ThePurists, he has taken up the mantle of being Editor At Large for Revolution.

This is his new blog. Check it out for the latest in the watch industry!

Anyway, look at this article HERE. Can spot me ah? I also reported on this JLC event earlier.

Amazing Credor Sonnerie...

Probably Seiko's most expensive watch ever at 15 million Yen (that's about RM480k). They make only 6 a year if not mistaken.

Video of how it works and sounds!

The Credor Sonnerie has it's own homepage here.

Fyi, Credor is Seiko's high end brand along with the high tech Grand Seikos.

Food glorious food!

My dinner last night... I decided to cook dinner.

First off, sambal udang kering using my mom's simplest of recipes :)



The omelette with some sliced sausages with spring onion plus a bit of chilli padi...



Finally chicken soup with fishballs and lots of chinese lettuce, celery, spring onion, coriander and tomatoes.



And since I made a bit too much sambal last night, I decided to fry some rice for lunch today...



For dinner today , I decided to look for this memorable taichow in Pudu called Yee San Fatt... located at Jalan Gajah opposite the Cantonese Methodist Church. It was packed!!!



Chew pai ai kua, deep fried eggplant with spring onions, coriander and dried shrimp.



Fuyue yaumak, romaine lettuce fried with femented beancurd.



And their house specialty, the belle of the ball, the utterly AMAZING kah heong yee tau (extra fragrant steamed fish head). It was served with a ton of ginger, garlic, coriander, spring onion and chai pao. Delicious!!! They also have other house specialties including seong tong lala and tippan siu yee.



Hungry yet?

Copyright (c) Kelvin Tan

Jean-Mairet Gillman Dinner In KL

Copyright (c) Kelvin Tan