Coffee & Cupcake; Wondermilk

One of my most guilty of guilty pleasures, up there on the list along with my moth-to-a-flame must-keep-watching-the-carwreck fascination with the vapid "reality" television show, Keeping Up With the Kardashians (as well as its spawn-like spin-offs Khloe & Lamar, and Kourtney & Kim Take New York... why do I know the names?! The shame!); uninspired romantic comedies with formulaic plots that I WILL scoff at aloud although my heart is secretly warmed by the notion of True Love occurring between the beautiful people on the TV screen, no matter how recycled that Love is; and eating feta cheese out of the jar, is... reading while eating.

Sounds innocuous enough? Doesn't seem like something I should get my panties in a guilty twist about? Sadly, my parents tried so hard during my childhood and teenagehood to break this habit of mine that now, although I am a grown twenty-something-year-old adult, I still feel guilty when I read while I eat. (Please note that although I am now an adult, I am, of course, still entitled to blame my idiosyncrasies on my parents. They fuck you up, your mum and dad... although I take artistic liberty here; I'm not really fucked up: I just like Philip Larkin and I have weird relationships with books and fizzy drinks because of my parents' food rules.)

My parents would plead and scold and beg (in vain, all in vain) for me to just STOP. READING. AT THE. DINNER TABLE. Antisocial, who cares; unfortunate side-effects Remnants Of Food In Books and Condensation From Drinking Glasses On Back Cover, bring it on. I was a really mature, obedient little first child (as in, I didn't even have an angst-y I-hate-my-parents phase kind of obedient), and reading at the dinner table was probably my only form of rebellion.

And now that I'm an adult... I can eat-and-read whenever I want! I also have some truly historic food stains in most of my favourite books from my childhood, but that is neither here nor there. Goosey is never appalled at my antisocial behaviour, mostly because he loves me and love means never pointing out that your partner has flecks of chicken in their Terry Pratchett, but also partly because he has an iPad, which is sort of like a book, only much more expensive and with better graphics, and which he plays with when I'm too busy reading and eating to talk to him.

I forgot what the point of this post was. I think I wanted to say that I had brunch at Wondermilk yesterday while reading The Marriage Plot and the combination of food, coffee, a big fat novel, and it being Sunday afternoon was almost too delicious to bear. DELICIOUS.

Hello Goodbye 2008

2008 in review and in summary and in neither particular nor chronological order:

I turned 23, started a food blog, got OG the car, quit equity research, joined a sovereign wealth fund, traded painful 7 am starts to the working day for more bearable 9 am starts which helped to make the case for my career change being one of the best decisions of my life, bought Hermes the beloved iPhone, sold Hermes the beloved iPhone, took possession of Samson the BlackBerry, read more than 20 books, missed and then didn't and then missed Faten when she came back and went away again because plus ca change, sister, bid a teary goodbye to Nazzybutt who left all of us to study abroad, came to terms with the fact that Zahirah is at 14 years old taller than me, saw Ali lose his two front teeth and the baby fat on his cheeks, cried as Splotch the Kitten died a slow overnight death, made people vote in the March elections and in that way affected my change onto the political landscape of Malaysia although I didn't register in time to vote, took an IQ test, got 4 points below the cut off IQ test level, swore off IQ tests forever, held a snake, caressed an iguana, had arm used as a parrot perch, watched Spain become the champions of Europe!, went to Hong Kong, went to Macau, went to New York, went to Singapore, went to Malacca, went home to Brunei several times but not nearly enough to satiate my homesickness, watched as the financial world panicked and imploded in the face of an economic recession tsunami, watched friends fall in and out of and in and out of love, welcomed a niece to the family... and world, became eerily fascinated by Sarah Palin and what she represents as a republican mother and career woman, was relieved when Obama won despite said fascination, discovered Jeopardy archives online which almost singlehandedly made my year, spent too much money on coffee, spent too much time on the wrong guy, spent too little time with my closest friends because none of them are even in the same country as me, wrote too much, slept too little, got heart broken, got over it, fell in love again anyway, ate a lot of food.


So here's to you, 2008. You brought the good, the bad, and a lot of drama. May 2009 bring more ups and downs and the proverbial it.

Dutch Tea; Dutch Harbour Cafe, Malacca

It's the day after Christmas and the Big Bosses are not in the office so the Lowly Underlings are savoring this rare and precious freedom and are roaming KLCC during office hours. If you see someone who looks like me in Kinokuniya or in the cinema anytime during 9am - 5pm, look away. It must be an evil twin doppelganger and you probably don't want to mess with her.


The end of the Malacca saga-in-pictures: coffee and cake at the Dutch Harbour Cafe, which overlooks the winding Venice-like river in town.

Koffie verkeerd, or, in English, coffee the wrong way round. Cafe au Lait with reversed proportions: 20% coffee and 80% milk, which suits my contrarian nature perfectly. Because why SHOULD something be the way everyone says it should be?! You should question everything and then do the opposite. I like this Dutch coffee mentality.

Dutch Apple Cake: I really only ordered this because I felt compelled to order something Dutch-y since I was in Malacca and at a Dutch cafe, but I was pleasantly surprised by the apple cake. It was warm and moist and comforting and it was raining outside and the whole effect was very under-your-covers-on-a-rainy-Sunday-morning.

Going to... umm... do work now. Remember what I said about the evil twin. She's very sneaky so really, remember that it definitely is not me waltzing around KLCC on a Friday afternoon, very blatantly not being in the office doing work.

Warm Chocolate Chip Cookie with Hot Fudge Sauce and Vanilla Ice Cream; Bijou, Mont Kiara

Well girls and boys, it is that time of the month where I crave cupcakes and kisses and chocolate and ice cream floats. Okay fine, I crave all this every DAY of the month, but I know when it’s THAT time of the month (does anyone else think that combining uppercase letters and euphemisms is sort of like a schizophrenic literary technique: Pay attention to what I am saying! Wait, don’t pay attention to the fact that I am talking about something gross and unsavoury! But pay attention to the screaming uppercase disguise of this gross thing!) when I suddenly find myself irascibly argumentative and completely intolerant of stupidity, inadequate customer service, and, my personal PMS pet peeve: people who think they know everything when clearly they do not, or if they DO know that thing, then they should realize that I know it too, and how dare they imply that I didn’t know whatever they were pointing out to me, regardless of the fact that they probably thought they were being helpful and harmless by pointing it out? (“Hey Iman, the KLCI is below 900 points.” “YES. I KNOW. PLEASE STOP INFORMING ME OF BASIC KNOWLEDGE TO WHICH I HAVE ACCESS AND INSTEAD DUNK YOUR HEAD IN COFFEE”).

Basically, anyone who either talks slow or thinks slow grates on my nerves like manicured nails on a blackboard right about now. I feel like I need to quarantine myself from people with an IQ below a certain level. I am so mean. It's completely irrational. Most of the time I am a warm, bright ray of sunshine. Right now I am a ray of blinding sarcasm and razor-sharp-will-make-you-bleed contention.


Chocolate makes me feel better though... so I am posting this picture of dessert that was the SHIZZLE. All my favourite things--Haagen Dazs ice cream (albeit vanilla), warm chocolate fudge, chocolate chip cookies, cappuccinos-- literally served on a platter and ready to be ingested so they could come together in a hari-raya-fireworks-type explosion of the chocolate variety in my mouth. THE SHIZZLE.

Bunet Coffee Flan; Neroteca, Raja Chulan